(23.12.17) Sakleshpur, Karnataka.
As we grow older, the number of destinations to visit nearby keep on narrowing down. Eventually to a point when we may have to re-visit those places. In a desperate effort to not repeat a place, we had chose to take a trip to Sakleshpur, since none of us cousins had been there. With a shoe-string budget and worried thoughts running about, we decided to leave on a Saturday morning. A re-connection with nature, why not?
The previous night was quite chaotic for me from all the work I had at my office. So I couldn't sleep much. We set off at 6.30 in the morning after a lot of delays caused due to a surprise dress-up and make-up competition by the ladies. After hitting the NICE road, we soon were listening to some of the best hits like 'Shape of you' and 'Love me like you do' and not to forget 'Despacito'. Soon we were all surprised to see some traffic caused by an accident. Toll traffic took up almost all our time until the next stop at Kicchana ಹಳ್ಳಿ ಮನೆ, for breakfast. It was almost 10.30 when we left, due to a rush hour at the hotel. Since we were already behind schedule, I took over my brother's driving and hit the throttle as hard as I could. While others slept/ate at the back, me and my brother kept our eyes on the road. Him doing the duties of the shotgun really well. My sister who sat as a third eye (Falcon) kept on engaging us with some snacks and some interesting songs like 'I'm a Barbie girl', 'Shalalalalala', and 'Oonchi hai building'. My brother on the contrary played old Kannada pop songs like 'ಉಪ್ಪಿಗಿಂತ ರುಚಿ ಬೇರೆ ಇಲ್ಲ' and 'Colour colour'. After a lot of curves and twists, we reached a hostile destination where the roads suddenly ended.
At what seemed to be the end of the road stood a madman with leaves in his hands and as we approached him, he started running towards the car. Seeing this as an approach of his to sell us something, we stopped momentarily and went ahead. But he still followed. This time I stopped to a standstill. Soon he started checking if he could get his hands inside car somehow, window by window. As he went to the 3rd one, he revealed a rod in his right hand. Seeing this, my sisters freaked out and seeing them I freaked out. I sped the vehicle as soon as I could and caught the right road to our home stay. One of the scariest things we witnessed, just to realize later from the locals that he was mentally challenged. The mud road didn't help us really and I cursed the owner of the home stay a lot since he told that our swift could get there easily. Eventually, there was some smell coming from the engine, burning of some wire. We let it cool a while and resumed. Just 2 kms away, we found our exotic home stay. It seemed a little weird initially, but things settled soon after we had lunch.
Next thing after lunch was one of the new experiences, Water volleyball and Zip line. One of the lamest games possible, one because none of my cousins knew how to play volleyball, and other that it was tough to move in knee-deep water. We invented games of our own soon and made terrific slow-mo videos of it. Catch-catch seemed a popular game soon, and the person who lost got water splashes by all others. Guess who lost in a major back-fire plan? After water sports it was time for us to have some tea and chill by the fireplace. After hearing and telling everyone's stories, we decided that we would just take a small walk to stargaze. One of the best activities, period. We watched the stars, which were so bright and lit up the sky. 'Sky full of stars' and 'Yellow', I sung inside my head. After some dinner and pretending to smoke through breathing in the cold, we soon headed back to our tents where we slept after playing some Antakshari. (P.S. They should ban any song ending with ಲ and ರ, because we seemed to run out of them)
Next morning we woke up to absolute fog and prepared ourselves for the trek that was planned. We got ready quickly in our trekking shoes and headed north ! (Because winter is coming) We lost our route after the guide abandoned us. With me and my brother's Bear Grylls like intelligence, we tracked the trail on our own. Inner self hi-fi. As we reached the closer to the top, our powerpuff girls had kept losing energy. However, reaching the top they regained their energy levels after we clicked their photos. We rested there for a while and just watched the landscape that was in front of us. A little cloud, a distinct fog line, cold breeze and absolute silence.
"Sometimes we are all like this solo cloud, in search of other clouds. Do we stop? No. We keep looking until we find them."
Getting down was pretty much simple and we wanted to reach the home stay ASAP as we hadn't had breakfast. We reached at 11.30 and falcon was down with a massive low energy level. After some refreshments and packing, we left the place at 1.30. After getting to meet some mad locals and drivers from another planet (Bus drivers) on the highway, we made sure to greet them with nice words that didn't get a chance to get out of the car. After a small pit stop for lunch at Hassan, we were again back on the road. A non-stop 100 kms covered in the next 1.5 hours to reach Polar bear near Kunigal. Being almost blinded with the reflection of the sun in rear-view mirrors, it was quite tough to get ahead of someone in the highway. As the captain was exhausted from driving soon after trekking, Shotgun soon took over and got us home safe back at 8.30 for dinner at home.
Do visit Sakleshpur for a small detour from the routine life. Its really peaceful and rejuvenating. Let the road make you forget all the worries and just indulge in the quiet breeze. We all wait for miracles in our lives. If it doesn't come to you, then YOU go and "Be the miracle".
