The whole planning began when we suddenly realized that we'd be having a long weekend coming up and the urge to do a getway was high in the air. Thanks to tripoto and a few recommendations from friends, we were finally able to zero down our decision to visit Dandeli.
I start from Hyderabad and my trotters from Chennai. The whole idea was to meet up at Bangalore. And kick start the road trip to dandeli.
I vaguely remember boarding the bus from kukatpally and reaching bangalore. We hired a toyota etios to hit the road. It was a pretty long drive. We stopped at a dabba for lunch. Packed some eatries. At about 8 we reached Hubli and checked in for the night. The whole time we had been on a roll, getting to know the newbies on the board, trying some crazy things like having conc. Tender coconut :P (will share the recipe on special request) loading the boot space with boxes of drinks, my personal favourite, the canberry & blueberry breezer. After the exhausting drive, the night fell short but the excitement for next day was held high.
It was a fine saturday morning. Woke up to play pranks on the boys and have a small tiffin to calm the growling tummies. Without delay, we continued to follow the directions from google maps to our destination. Although the memories of some first time'r stays fresh in my mind. I'm going to outrightly keep off from getting into the details of what the actual fun part was. So kids, moving on from here. It would be really ignorant of a traveller to miss the scenes of some beautiful windmills, far stretched barren lands, a beautiful pond covered with white and pink lotus, a visual that will linger for long and ofcourse the dense forests that began to show sight on the either side of the road. As we kept driving we realized we had lost the route to jungle camp, our accomodation for the night. It was a real maze finding ourselves back on track and no sooner found a small cut out that revealed what we kept looking for.
Upon entering, the place seemed more like a camp site, with tents and pacca houses and enough space around to linger and plan our sightseeing. As we kept looking at the options, I took great interest in jacuzzi and boating. Turns out these would be available in the evening and we were already workin out on our costume for these events. So we visited this small market and zipped around the streets. Stopped by the bridge and the river that flowed beneath. It felt nearly adventurous. Not knowing what to next. It was about time. We drove back to our campsite
The guide was waiting for us. Now the madness was about to begin. The guide was quite all through, but i din't know what happened to us. It was as if the lauging gas filled the air and we kept joking and giggling at every word that came out. We kept getting deeper in the forest, some serious sharp turns along the road, crazy view and the wildnerness in the air. The moon above us.The place we been looking for finally showed up. We could hear the streams down under. The view was so serene. Spotted a few people boating, and enjoying the jacuzzi. The fun was about to begin..
Soon we found ourselves ready for the boating. Requested the guide to make us have the boat for ourselves and a rower was tagged along with us. We stepped into the raft and held the row. It almost felt like I was in a huckleberry fin story. And when the boys jumped into the river. The story shifted to Titanic.LOL. We rowed till our arms gave up. The stream was clear and refreshingly cold.
The best time for us to try the jacuzzi. And ofcourse, it turned out to be the best decision ever. Jaccuzi felt like a crazy experience!
From dusk into the night, we were content to our hearts and felt drained. Later we smoked up at the camp, stayed up as long as we could. Had serious meaningless talks. And finally crashed in the camping tents. For luck sake, we saw the the full moon, slowly hiding itself behing the moving clouds and fell asleep.
The next morning, we hurled out of the tents and quickly got into the car to start back to the city. The feeling from yesterday had given us the refreshing boost to keep us pumped all through our way back to bangalore. The same evening we had our buses to board, back to our busy lives. But not the same way. We bid goodbyes, promising to make another trip soon, bigger and better than this one. Dandeli, on the whole was a perfect getway trip.
