As you drive towards
Hassan, a district town a little under 200 kilometres from Bengaluru, you go
through half-a-dozen tollbooths. But you are keen to reach your destination
fast and so you don’t mind paying a few hundred rupees to use the mostly
four-lane National Highway 75 that’s smooth as a ribbon. But Hassan is not your
destination. You take a deviation just before: off the highway, on the way to
Mudikere.
The road is more
“normal” here, narrower and often broken at the edges, but still very fine. The
only problems are the drivers born out of wedlock, desperate to overtake other
vehicles … they pass dangerously close to you from front and behind. While
you’re wondering why these idiots are in such tearing hurry, you weather a few
near misses and turn left at Mudikere towards Kottigehere. You take a right
turn there and start climbing the Nilgiri Hills towards Kalasa. After seven short kilometres and the first
hair-pin bend, you are greeted by a stone slab on your left that says:
Balur Estate, 1853
I have given a
somewhat graphic how-to-reach-there because if you get an opportunity to visit Balur
in Chikkamagaluru, you must not miss it. And if you don’t, you might look up my
blog sometime in the future and fulfil my ambition to be of some use to humanity.
Balur is an
800-acre coffee plantation cradled in the Blue Mountains. It’s just off the
road, but when you enter the estate hidden behind silver oaks and thick bushes,
you feel you are hundreds of miles from the rest of the world. There is
absolute stillness but for birds’ trill. Peace.
On
the slope of a hillock, an enormous bungalow in the middle – home for
generations of planter “sahibs” – is flanked by two smaller structures on
either side. There is also a swimming pool behind. The coffee planters who ran
this place obviously took material comforts seriously. In front of the
bungalows are a number of rectangular red flats made of brick. They are for
drying the produce, namely, coffee beans, cardamom, and pepper. The estate
office is a little below in a thatched cottage, in front of which about a
hundred workers, men and women, assemble every morning, After a roll-call, they
melt into the jungles to cut weeds and spray pesticides. They will harvest the
crop in the winter. It’s jungle all around. You see thick shrubs of coffee and
cardamom plants and tall trees around which pepper and other creepers climb. … A
world in myriad shades of green!
The main bungalow
– we were lucky to be allotted this – has a large hall in front, a more
intimate parlour inside, and bedrooms on either side. The rooms are about
fifteen feet tall with some glass panes fixed on to the tiled roofs. So even
the rooms inside get natural light during the day and at night when you lie
down, you get a glimpse of the universe beyond. In the rear of the bungalow is
a dining room that opens into an enormous kitchen. On the long table in the
dining room a fabulous lunch had been spread out by the time we reached. And an
exquisite Coorg cuisine is not the only thing that’s special about the place.
It will be an
understatement if I say the place is well-appointed. The furniture is a
combination of the old and the new, and the new ones have been carpentered to
match the earlier antique pieces with intricate carvings. The people who run
this place obviously have taste and an eye for details.
The eye for
details was further confirmed when it became dark and suddenly the resort came
alive with millions of crickets making a huge noise that only made the place
even quieter. There are books to read and a carom board and board games like
chess and Scrabble which you put to good use in the evening. You are closer to
the elements when you are at Balur. The human species is two million years old
and except for about just two hundred years or so since Thomas Alva Edison
invented the light bulb, our life was neatly divided into two parts: work
during the day and relax when it’s dark. At Balur, you follow this simple
primordial routine and wonder why we should run around sixteen hours every
goddamned day!
So that’s what
life should be. Relax in the evening, sleep early, wake up with the chirping
birds to go on a long walk through the plantation. The breakfast is ready when
you are back. And then you have the entire day before you for more walk or to
feed stray dogs with broken biscuits. Can you think of a more enchanting
holiday?
Bengaluru
Monday, 01 June 2015
