Coorg – A visit to The Scotland of India

I have not been to Scotland yet, so not quite sure about the comparison with Coorg here. But I am pretty sure that people who have come up with this analogy must be right. They won’t do it just like that for fun. Right? Well, hope so.

Anyways, I visited Coorg with a few friends of mine when I was during my initial job training in Mysore. There are a lot of places that I visited when I was here. We wouldn’t leave any weekend to explore. Coorg is just 120 km from Mysore, so we decided for just a day trip to be enough to explore this wonderful place and booked a car through Zoomcar.

The Coorg Plan

Since we decided to go for a day trip, we had to leave early. Like around 6 in the morning. It is an okayish time as compared to me sometimes having to wake up at 4:30 AM. Like when I had my trip to Amritsar. Argh!!

Anyways so, of course, we googled for the places that Coorg has to offer and we found this one monastery that comes on the way. Followed by a waterfall and finally ending our day with a famous forest park in this region. 

Namdroling Monastery -> Abbey Falls -> Nisargadhama Forest Park

Namdroling Monastery

As you might already know, if you follow me, I am a nature lover and also love exploring historic places with either great architecture or a story behind. Now this monastery was one which has a really beautiful architecture.

Timings: 9 AM – 6 PM
Entry Fees: No entry fee

As mentioned in Wikipedia, it is the largest teaching center of the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism in the world. I didn’t know it was a teaching center when I visited. Of course, being a Buddhist place, there were so many lamas here.

The outer view of the monastery was so beautiful that it took 10-12 captures to satisfy me. It was a three-tiered structure which is bright blue and gold-coloured. With a variety of Tibetan symbols, there is an image of Pema Norbu Rinpoche, the creator of the temple, right in the middle. I actually didn’t think that the view inside would be so much more beautiful.

But I was just amazed. There are three statues of Buddha avatars situated at the end. They are all huge and gold plated. The middle one being the tallest with a height of 60 feet. Due to these golden statues, this monastery is also known as the golden temple. 

I still cannot explain the extent of how much I was in awe with the architecture. So much detail and small structures in the walls and pillars inside. With bright colours of blue, gold, red and green, it is very appealing to the eye. 

After sitting around and exploring the walls as you might say, we decided it was time to go hit the next destination. 

Abbey Falls

Timings: 9 AM – 5 PM
Entry Fees: INR 15

Waterfalls are so cool. I mean they literally are cold because, well, they come from mountains. Take any coastal region in India, and you will definitely find a waterfall to visit. Same goes for this one.

Abbey falls come under the top 5 places to visit in Coorg. So, of course, we had to visit too and see it for ourselves. The road leading to these falls is very round and round. Very beautiful and a serene drive. We parked our car in the parking area and then came the stairs. Not much but still yeah, stairs.

Even before reaching the top, we could hear the water. And when we reached, it was a tad disappointing. I mean, the fall was no doubt beautiful. But the crowd!!! Man, there were so damn many people. It was really difficult to go close to the edge. I even got stepped on multiple times. That crowd was such a downer for me.

Eventually, I pushed everyone and made it to the front to get a proper unobstructed view of the falls. Not very proud of me pushing others, but hey, they started it. And it was totally worth it. You can feel the cool breeze and even water spray from time to time. 

After about an hour, we decided to go back and head for the forest park. Well, not without having a dose of some fresh coconut water and some much time.

Nisargadhama Forest Park

Timings: 9 AM – 5 PM
Entry Fees:  Adult – INR 10/ Children – INR 5
Elephant ride: INR 25

By the time we reached here, the weather turned out to be so wonderful. With dark clouds shadowing the sun and wind blowing. Ah! I just LOVE this kinda weather. Totally opposite of what I experienced at Karanji Lake.

There was a restaurant right beside the entrance of the park where you can dine in. Also, there were a few shops and stalls to buy souvenirs and of course coconut water. The best part about travelling to coastal regions is the abundance of coconut water availability.  

Anyways, so we had our second helping of coconut water of the day and headed towards the park. Of course, after buying entrance tickets.

We encountered many open entrances like this inside the park also and all of them were decorated in this similar way. It felt like a children’s park with many drawings seen on the trees. Even the ones which were uprooted and just the trunk was left, it was beautifully decorated with illustrations of which I could not understand were. 

It also had a huge water stream for boating purpose. They are not open all year long. Depending on the season and weather here in Coorg, they open up the boating facility to the public. The time that we visited, it was closed. Not sure it was due to the season or the bad weather that day.

There were also some stalls of various food inside the park. Like creating cotton candy of your colour choice, popcorn of different flavours, snack and of course, coconut water 😀 Enjoyed my fill of third serving of the day.

Conclusion

It was one heck of a day. Coorg has a lot many more places to visit but since we decided for just a 1-day trip so had to limit to just a few. Nonetheless, it was a wonderful day spent.