Nature Resort Orange County, Coorg

Sandeep and I waited for 2 years after marriage to set time off together for our honeymoon. Yeah, that sounds pretty procastinating right? Anyways, we decided to go to Munnar and Goa, in that order. I checked for hotels in Munnar, read their extensive reviews online, shortlisted a few, called them up, and almost decided on the Club Mahindra resort, when I realized Sandeep had always wanted to visit Coorg, and, therefore, quickly substituted Munnar with Coorg in the itinerary. Immediately, we started looking for hotels and resorts in Coorg. The one name for a resort in Coorg that we got to hear from a lot of people was Orange County. That got both of us really interested in the place and we decided to stay at Orange County in Coorg.

Right from reserving a cottage to checking out from the resort, it was a cakewalk for us. Nidhi, from reservations, seemed very friendly and was willing to answer all my questions with utmost patience. She detailed me on the reservation process, gave a lot of information about the resort and also told us how we could make our stay enjoyable at the resort. What was striking and different from other general commercial hotels was that she also called up a day before our trip to see if we needed something while in the resort and if we were all set to go!

Little gestures, but they make a lot of difference.

Here, I will skip the details of our journey to the resort considering that my post is a long one.

As soon as we got off the car and walked towards the reception, we were welcomed by a group of musicians playing resounding drums and traditional flutes. That brought a smile to our faces. We were also pleasantly surprised when the lady welcomed us at the entrance the traditional way with a tika on our foreheads and invited us inside.

Little gestures, but they speak volumes.

We were offered fresh sugarcane juice mixed with herbs. Unfortunately, Sandeep thought it was a medicinal potion more than anything else, but I found it refreshing!
The picturesque resort looked very neat and green, with coffee plantations all over, and a variety of trees. Just to let you know, Orange County Coorg is a nature resort, while its counterpart at Kabini is a wildlife resort. Coming back to us, the check in was simple and fast, and an executive led us to our cottage in a cute electric driven buggy. The buggy looked more like a ladybird to me, only white instead of red and without the spots. Got to know that you can take these buggy rides inside the resort.

The executive from the reception spoke to us about the resort on our 2 minute ride to our cottage. After we'd reached our cottage, she took us through the cottage and guided us on all the essentials that were provided for our stay. It was a nicely done up cottage very suitable for a couple.

Soon, we got a call from the housekeeping head introducing herself and letting us know that she would be available for any housekeeping help needed. The lady seemed extremely nice and friendly. In addition, Prasad, the ever-smiling housekeeping guy who was in charge of our cottage turned up to introduce himself and also asked if we needed something right away.

Below is a quick shot of our room. We had a minibar, a daily supply of complimentary fresh fruits, cookies, cashews, coffee and tea essentials.



The resort is serene and picture perfect. So, we decided to tour through the accessible areas of the resort on foot. Nothing beats taking a break in the lap of nature, and walking amidst greenery. It definitely was a welcome break from the noisy hurriedness of city life. One thing that was pleasantly striking was that every employee of the resort would greet us with a smiling 'Namaskara' (the traditional Coorgi way of greeting), wherever we'd meet them. All of them, right from the executives to the leaf-gatherer, would greet the guests with a smiling face and exude warmth. The resort is definitely beautiful, but such smiling and nice people around definitely add to the charm and the beauty of the place.

The 3 restaurants, The Granary, Plantain Leaf, and The Peppercorn are all worth visiting. While the Granary is the default place for most guests because it serves a variety of food, we also tried the Plantain Leaf. I must mention Veenu here who hosted us at the Plantain Leaf. We went there for breakfast, and he was the perfect host encouraging us to try all the fresh and hot breakfast items. He seemed to really like his job, and almost took it to heart when I specified that the Dosa was good. He was quick to ask, 'what about the rest?' He ensured that we had our fill and was keen on us having us eat more! Its the same kind of warmth and hospitality you get when you visit a friend or a relative for lunch or dinner.

Besides, the resort has a nice Coffee Lounge next to green paddy fields. Sip some hot nice sweetened Coorg coffee and enjoy the serenity any time of the day or night. Or, get some french pressed coffee stirred up in your cottage itself, sit out in the balcony and enjoy!

The nature resort is beautifully mapped with clusters of trees and plants. Some of these clusters include Pepper, Cherry, Mango, Coffee, Cinnamon and lots more. The resort takes care of the varieties of plants growing there and the large number of birds the green blanket houses.



Talking of birds, the resort has a great bird watching tour everyday that starts at around 6:30 in the morning. The mornings are beautiful, cold and misty. The guide Murthy, is another ever-smiling guy who is knowledgeable about birds. It was fascinating to see him whistle and generate responses from some birds! Besides bird watching, the resort also conducts a Forest Trail which is both fun and adventurous.



Few more gestures from the resort added to the great feeling I have for this place. I wanted a few clothes just dried and sent over while we toured through the resort. Prasad went out of his way to get them dried and also properly ironed at no extra cost and walked through the entire resort looking for us to get our permission to keep the clothes in our cottage!

One evening, the resort also gifted us a bottle of wine and a cake to celebrate our married life!

Also, we were to check out early morning at 6:30 and had asked for some breakfast to be arranged. They were more than willing to arrange for it. We found our breakfast immaculately packed and ready for us.

Another great point about this resort is, if you are taking your car along with a driver, they provide great boarding and lodging for the driver too at no extra cost! This is definitely a great way to ensure that their guests are happy and comfortable.

We had a nice stay for 3 days. The swimming pool is nice and serene. If you are a couple and would like more privacy and more calm, try the couples swimming pool. I suggest these pools are temperature regulated though! The water made us cold, but the warm sunbath after the swim made up for it.

Well, coming to the expenses, Orange County is a little on the seemingly-expensive side, and you may feel the big cavern in your pocket when you pay the entire amount in advance. However, once you reach the place, you really don't feel the pangs of having paid whatever you paid. At least we didnt. The place, the people, the warmth, the nature, and the hospitality will definitely sweep you off your feet.

Overall, the hospitality of the resort is great. No wonder the place has already carved a niche in the industry. I believe its a unique hospitable culture imbued in every employee that makes the place so much more than just a resort. If Im going back to Coorg, it'll be Orange County for me!

History as a Subject

How many of you would like to differ with this statement: 'I HATE History' ? Not many, I guess. Maybe a few will. But, only a few. The rest of us will surely want to scream even x years after school that we HATE history. I remember my history-studying years in school: I'd never, never think of touching my History book; let alone studying. Every history examination, every single one of them would give me heebee jeebies, and I'd feel as if I was eating dirt when I had to study the subject. The evening before every history exam, I'd have a crying session, around 30 mins, when I'd just remain quiet and feel the tides coming out of my eyes, eventually inundating my face. I'd refuse to look at anybody, but would make sure I was giving sly glances at my elder brother because he would help me with every other subject. But he wouldn't budge when it came to History. Finally, I'd howl, simply because I dreaded not being able to remember when Alexander had become the king, or how many gates the Sanchi Stupa has, and because I'd feel extremely unprepared. To confirm, this would happen only with History. Eventually, my mom would come to my rescue. She would console me, and read out every single sentence to me. Every single sentence from every chapter! I'd just follow her once and by some cosmic grace, I'd be well prepared in just a few hours. To answer follow-up questions in your mind, I would invariably score the highest in the subject.

Now I wonder, what was it about the subject that I dreaded (read 'hated') most? I also tried to figure out if I was the only one to feel this way or were there other folks too. Thankfully, I was happy to know there were lots of people like me out there who disliked the subject. Yes, lots of them. When I take a deep dive into why I hated it, I realize there were quite a few factors:
1. As a kid, I really didnt want to read about kings and their administrative system and their caste system and their financial system and their architectural abilities and strategic moves because I never realized what good came to me of it.
2. Though the books fed me with all kinds of dimensions of the domes, the gates, the stairs, the shapes of the temples, I could never visualize the architecture of temples and the innumerable structures built. Somehow I couldnt.
3. The only focus of studying history was because it was a subject set by ICSE, CBSE, State boards etc etc. Never was the beauty of the past highlighted. I knew about the security setup of Ashoka, but could never identify with the wars he fought, or why all of a sudden he despised the battlefield.

What I strongly feel about the subject now is that its not just a subject. Its a beautiful yarn that can be woven quite well, and quite beautifully. Id love it if my teachers would've not really opened the book and read para by para but told me in a story-like manner how Akbar or Jahangir fought battles, how Buddha attained Nirvana, or why Bahadur Shah Zafar wasnt as strong a Mughal ruler like his predecessors. Rather than being forced to gulp down these from pages in a book, had the education system been such that these were told in the form of stories, I'm sure a lot of students would love this subject.

In addition, rather than mentioning that the Mughal architecture had x, y, z kind of structures, a real field excursion will definitely help students in understanding the architectural styles of empires. Who would want to read about the dimensions of the Buland Darwaza, but show this lofty structure to students and tell them why it was built and why it was so called, and I'm sure the visual appeal will help students remember details. I mean taking students out for excursions to some of the most imposing and living structures and explaining the who's and the why's to them instead of asking them to learn by rote. Keeping the financial factor aside, I wonder how much the 'concept' schools of today think of how to better the education strategies.

BTW, just to let you all know, my mom has a Masters in Indian History. :)

Perfume Shopping

Couldnt keep this dialogue between the hero (of my book) and the saleswoman.

The hero goes to buy a perfume.
Saleswoman: What kind of fragrance do you like Sir, musk, aquatic, woody or..?
Hero: Umm, something really strong that can cover my f**t.

The girl shudders, her jaws drop, but somehow she gathers herself.
"Ahem, let me show you some of the brands we carry Sir..."
He cuts her short "You know, something, something really strong and long lasting. Which one do you think will suit me? And mind you, I want to test it, here, now."
"Yes Sir, I will help you test it."
"Ha ha, I doubt you will be able to help me with it."
"Then Sir, I suggest you go to the trial room and try it out!" She replied, visibly irritated.

...
...
...
Few more dialogues after which the guy buys a perfume. True to his traits, he buys the brand Fcuk.

Facebook fad about Bra Colors! Red, Black or Zebra Stripes?

We all must have seen the Facebook status messages mentioning colors. Red, Blue, Black, Silver, Gold and what not! Thats the latest fad. And innocent creatures who never really understood what they signify have been trying haplessly to find out the meaning of these colorful mumbo-jumbo of statuses! To give you a light-humored joke, there are males who never understood what these colors meant, and they put up colors as their status messages, only to try and hide under their desks when they were laughed at by friends! Apparently, its like a mystery which has been decoded and posted on Yahoo Answers and all over the internet too. Again apparently, its about spreading awareness about breast cancer. And how is this been done? Female facebook users are supposed to mention these colors and spread the word among their lady friends.

I wonder: Just creating an aura of mystery about some arbitrary colors and gathering 'oohs' and 'aahs' about them are by no means a way to spread awareness about breast cancer! Also, going by the kinds of comments on these status messages, if the motive is also to show how bold you by trying to create a peek-a-boo visual imagination of a colorful bra on a public forum, trust me, its not boldness to a nanoparticle! Let me ask you, Where is the boldness if you just mention 'red,' 'maroon,' 'fuschia,' 'Vibgyor,' 'tiger stripes' as your status? I'd rather say the 'Pink Chaddi' campaign was bold.

I dont even think the actual motive of spreading awareness is anywhere noticeable! Where is the awareness if my lady colleague comes to me and asks me 'what is this hoopla with colors as facebook status messages?' Maybe 30% of the women don't even know what this is all about! It appears to be just the farcical peer pressure of displaying how fashionable you are.

If awareness about a constant raging disease has to be spread, get up and gear up for it. Go to schools, talk about it, set up ways to have free testing for rural women, spread the awareness about it in your own home first. Its a noble cause. If you want to spread awareness about it, care for yourself and dont create a patchwork of colored status murals on facebook.

My First Spooky Feeling

Well, folks at office are gearing up for Halloween, and there’s the word ‘spooky’ everywhere. This reminds me of the first serious spooky feeling I had.

As a kid, I was never afraid of ghosts, or the darkness, which made me quite famous at home. And I used to enjoy the fame more so because my elder brother was quite scared of darkness.

This was the first ever spooky ghostly fear I had when I was in the eighth grade. I had watched this movie Evil Dead (dont remember which part) and the same day my uncle had added more fuel to the spooky fire already raging in me. He talked of another movie in which a hand, just the fingers, the palm and the wrist would be crawling and tapping at a table. I was scared to my blood cells!

Now, I was in the habit of getting up early morning before anyone else at home did, would exercise a little and would definitely skip with a skipping rope. That movie night was a difficult night for my poor soul, I couldn't sleep well. Nevertheless, I got up and exercised a little. However, nothing was taking that hand off my mind. I started skipping, but I'd find myself stopping and looking back at the window. I felt that the hand would appear suddenly and just tug at my skipping rope. I'd come to know of it when I'd feel the rope being pulled at.

I really found myself sweating, not for skipping because I'd stop every few seconds and look back through the corners of my eyes, but out of fear. Slowly the fear gripped me so bad I could actually feel myself seeing a white wrinkled hand slowly approaching from the window! No time to think, run, just run, I told myself. I just hurled the rope on the ground, ran back to my mom's room, got into bed, covered myself from head to toe with a blanket and forced my eyes to close.

I didnt know when I had dozed off this way. Woke up startled when I found my mom trying to wake me up! I was happy to see her and more so to see sunlight outside the window. Thank God that hand had disappeared!

'Jai Ho' A R Rahman Live Show at GMR Arena Hyderabad

A R Rahman Jai Ho Live Concert at Hyderabad.

On October 24, Saturday, there was an A R Rahman live concert held at GMR Arena near Hotel Novotel at Shamshabad Airport Hyderabad, also known as the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport. The live show was named 'Jai Ho' for reasons that need not be explained. Sandeep got two tickets for Rs 7,500 each, and all for free! That was more of an incentive for us to go :). Shamshabad airport is 30 kms from our home and though we had taken driving directions from Google Maps, we didn't want to drive back all the way at night. So we took the Aeroexpress bus from near our home deciding to take the Aeroexpress back again.

The show was supposed to start at 7:30 pm. Ours was a sudden decision, so we knew we'd be late by some 30 minutes or so. We were wrong in our estimate coz we had discounted the eccentricities of the Aeroexpress. The 7:30 pm Aeroexpress came in at 8pm (gosh!) and we reached the airport at 9 pm, only to know that GMR Arena was not close to the airport but a few kilometers away. God! We were stuck as to how to get through those few kilometers! How we wished we had got our vehicle. Nevertheless, there was this airport official who directed us to the airport shuttle that would take us around a kilometer to another RTC bus stop, where we would get another shuttle to the GMR Arena! So be it, we thought and took the first shuttle, and then the second shuttle. We were asked to drop off at a place, which was reeking with people, cars, noise, police, security, two wheelers, and a lot of dirty granular stony sandy land. It was the final stop beyond which no vehicles would be allowed, and you would've to walk all the way to the arena. So, you mean that wasnt the arena? Yes, you're right, that was not the arena; the arena was around 1/1.5 kilometers away. And you may ask, how did you guys get there? We walked. Yes, everyone had to walk from that point to the main arena where A R Rahman was singing! Good lord! So we walked. We saw tonnes of people coming back and feared the show may have ended. However, most of those returning were those folks who had the Rs 500 tickets with them. They had to watch the show standing. Standing? Yes, and that too from faaaar off where one could only see the lights at a distance, like we get to see tiny glimpses of lights in the dark from a train. We found lots of people standing at all possible places from where they could at least see just lights and lights and hear music.

We reached the category for the 7500 tickets and was allowed inside after a brief few seconds of what were supposed to be security checks. We entered, my legs paining after the long walk through the coarse sand. However, it was a bursting of the excitement bubble, coz even getting tickets for 7,500 category, all you could see were floating figures on the far off stage.

In addition, Rahman and troupe sang mostly in Tamil, though he has so many of the Hindi numbers. Well probably he did so considering the geographic location of his concert, however, I guess he may already have known by now that there is an equal mix of people from all regions in the job-rich Hyderabad city, and that geographies are mainly blurred lines when it comes to music. I'm sure there were lots of other people who would've expected to hear more Hindi numbers,(I think there were only 3/4 Hindi songs) considering that Hindi movies/songs reign all over the country and Tamil or Bengali or Assamese songs are mostly tied to their locations. No harsh thoughts or discrimination is hinted here, don't get me wrong.

We did enjoy some of the songs though, with all the dazzling lights and the dancing silhouettes, and the fireworks.

However, there was this character, I have no idea who he was, who popped up in the middle of the audience trying to grab attention by uttering some mumbo jumbo. He may have been an RJ, or a self-appointed rapper of sorts, but it looked like he wanted to grab the lens and the media attention, and was definitely the wet-blanket quotient of the entire show.

To top it all, when the concert ended at 10:30 pm. the place was a mess with cars trying to get out, tonnes of people running about, walking, sitting all around, and the police strewn all over with no idea of what to do and how to do the what to dos. The shuttles seemed to have been shut down and we had no idea how to get back, at least to the Aeroexpress stop, leave alone getting back home. We walked, and walked, and walked, through the granular pit-heavy sandy road, through the crowded lanes, through the parking, through snaking lines of people, and then reached the Aeroexpress stop at 11:45 only to know that the next bus would be at 12:30 am. We waited and waited and then finally reached home at 1:30 am.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz the entire of the next day, so tired were our feet.

Hubby's New Interest in the Kitchen

Sandeep has recently acquired an interest in kitchen appliances, and its nice to see his interest soaring. Last Sunday, he took me to an electronics appliances store to see some cell phones. I've been planning to change my cell phone since May of this year, and have been dilly-dallying between an iPhone, a Nokia E71, and a Google Android, but haven't really zeroed in on any. Anyways, we checked the phones in the store, remained as confused as ever and started looking at the other stuff those guys sold. When I went in to check a blender-plus-chopper (which, again, was on my mind for long), Sandeep was really impressed to see the effect to which this appliance could be used. He was up for it even before I decided on it, and he almost immediately bought it. After picking up the blender-chopper in an instant, he moved to the other appliances, seemingly very interested in the enormous ease they would bring to his wife's kitchen chores. He was excited about a microwave, a better quality mixer, grinder, juicer than the one I have, a toaster, a sophisticated blender-cum-egg-beater and what not! He insisted on a microwave then and there! Only after much convincing that I'd have to research a little on microwave ovens before buying helped me put off buying one instantly!

To add to this, he came back home, fixed the blender chopper he got me, cleaned it, peeled onions, chopped them, blended up some yummy lassi and felt victorious at the feat! I was amazed by his enthu. In addition, he searched for other modern kitchen appliances and I found him scouring through brand name sites like kitchenaid, cuisipro, cooking.com and so many more. I remembered working with these sites for quite some time, I had created account plans and optimized them a number of times.

Sandeep seemed really happy with his searches and we are planning on some new posh stuff for our kitchen! We have a microwave, a coffee maker (ha, ha)in our immediate buying list. Good gracious lord for getting such an amazing husband. Well, he understands how difficult it is for me to get to cooking and chopping at a stage when I'm still getting better with my right hand after our accident, and also how efficiently and technologically superfast these appliances can be.

Thank You Mr.Husband- From Your Wife. :)