Exploring South India - Part 1 of many more to come

For our first weekend in Bangalore, we decided to get out of the city and explore South India. We had initially planned on going to Mysore to visit family, but due to scheduling conflicts that had to be postponed. A few google searches later we decided on heading to Hassan, a town along the Bangalore-Mangalore highway. Unfortunately, we couldn't find a reasonable hotel that had rooms for the night, and on a recommendation we changed destinations to Saklehspur, which is 230km from Bangalore (a 5 hour drive). The weekend, like most things in India, had it's ups and downs. Lets start with the ups

The Ups

Sakleshpur is at the foothills of the Sahaydri's (Western Ghats). We stayed at The Hills, a tiny resort, which is nestled amidst coffee plantations with incredible views of tropical green hills enveloped in clouds. While we had to move rooms, because our first room didn't come with an A/C, both rooms we got were clean and pretty luxurious.

The drive to The Hills itself was a bit tedious, the last 30 km was down a windy single lane road, where I had to maneuver around oncoming trucks.

We had plans of checking out the surrounding areas, but instead we chose to just laze around and enjoy the downtime. For the more active, the area had promising treks to explore. We did have to deal with a bunch of boisterous kids along with some very out of place Robert Miles like music during meal times, but on the whole it was very relaxing.

To get to the hills you have to take NH 4 coming out of Bangalore and then switch to NH 48 headed towards Mangalore. NH 48 becomes a 2 lane highway and it winds through beautiful coffee plantations as you get closer to Sakleshpur. It would have been fun to tour one of these coffee plantations (image to the left); something for our next visit.







The Downs
The weekend wasn't without it's share of adventure. 30 mins into the drive to Sakleshpur we got a flat. Thankfully our rental had a spare and after wrestling with the jack I successfully dealt with my very first flat tire.

I didn't realize this was just the beginning. On our way back, a passenger auto rickshaw rear ended our car. Basically destroyed the bumper and damaged the trunk. He hit the car and veered off into the trees at the side of the road. Thankfully no one was hurt in either vehicle. As with all accidents, we quickly attracted a crowd. Since I speak no Kannada, the on lookers helped translate between me and rickshaw driver. I insisted he pay me for the damage, but he just got into his rickshaw and drove off.
Sympathetic bystanders took me and and my wife to the nearest police station. I wasn't all too excited to deal with the police here, but since the car was a rental, I figured I needed to lodge a complaint in case insurance would need it. I'm not sure what I expected, but I didn't think that they wouldn't register my complaint. The cops explained that if I was going to file a complaint I would have to leave the car overnight. There was no way I was going to leave this car 150km away from Bangalore overnight. Why they couldn't just take pictures of my damaged car and let me go escapes me. In the end no complaint was filed. It just wasn't worth it.
The final installment of the weekend comes when we were barely 15 mins away from home. I apparently missed a sign that said no 4 wheelers allowed down this road and I promptly got a ticket for this oversight. Not really much of an oversight, because when I asked the traffic cop about the sign he told me that it was written in Kannada. A little unfair that there were no accompanying signs in English of Hindi.

At the end of the day, India is a little bit unfair. Sometimes that works in your favor, and other times you just have to suck it up.