We all travel for fun, exploration, understanding, exposure and experience. World is a book and we all have read as many pages as possible by visiting and exploring as many destinations as possible. The holiday destinations are in aplenty in India. It really matters for a traveler to do a prudent research and pick a destination to explore. The zest to understand the culture, tradition and food habits can drive you to places that are popular and loved by most of the travelers.

There are many reasons to love a place that we visit and one important aspect every traveler reflects is the location. The purpose of visits to any holiday destination can be varying from one traveler to the other. If you have travelled to South India and got a chance to visit Karnataka then you must be heard of the Western Ghats belt and coastal region which is rich with history, culture, heritage and cuisines. Foodies will sure love the same menu prepared in different styles with different ingredients that has history in its own manifestation.

Recently we a group of travel freak techies from the North India planned to explore the Malnad region. We were told by our colleagues who are from that region that it is a great place to visit. Yes it is! We realized the worth of visiting Karnataka after landing in this region. It might sound exaggerated but the activities and adventures we did was simple thrilling and mind blowing. Though we could touch the International Airport at Bangalore, which is again a busy city, we managed to sneak out not even meeting our friends in Bangalore.

The itinerary was well thought out and chiseled carefully from our travel planner team from Karnataka and of course with our approval. The day we started towards the coffee country and the known hill station in Karnataka, Coorg, we were not aware about the aesthetics of the place. Climate was chill when we reached in the night after covering the Kushalnagar and Tibetan Monastery. Thank God! We all had carried warm cloths and hence saved ourselves from drilling cold weather. We made ourselves comfortable checking in into a homestay in Coorg. It was the best place where we tried the best possible preparations of the Coorg cuisine.

Next day we covered the Raja Seat, Abbey Falls, Talacauvery and by the dusk again retreated to the homestay. We all had a nice party, spent overnight chatting about the work, family, future, politics… When we woke up in the morning it was 9 and was all late to start towards Thirthahalli, our next destination. We managed to reach a homestay in Thirthahalli around 2PM for lunch. We were tired driving the snake roads and at places the roads were really bad which made us curse the deficiency of the system to fix it.

Thirthahalli, a small town located on the river bank was to my mind the imaginary town in R K Narayan’s Malgudi Days. The local people told us 28 Km from there the real ‘Malgudi Days’ shooting was done. I was amazed at the simplicity of the people and the place and my cameras started running out of memory space. I managed to transfer all them on cloud using the internet at the homestay. We tried akki rotti, kadabu, koli saaru, kori rotti, jackfruit kadabu, aape… that are the known menu of Thirthahalli Cuisine.

Well, we stayed for 2 nights in thirthahalli and completed all sightseeing places including great national laureate Kuvempu’s birth place. Time came for us to see the real Malgudi Town, Agumbe and leave to Udupi for lunch. That’s correct! The land of Krishna, famous temple in South India for prilgrimage in Udupi. We visited udupi and tried the button idlies floating in the rasam and sat down for lunch around 2Pm at Mitra Samaj, a hotel with a history in Udupi. After that our journey was towards Mangalore, our final destination in Karnataka. We needed some real relaxation, so we had booked beach resort and spent 2 more nights in Mangalore partying, swimming and doing nothing serious. This is our travelogue for this year, come yourself to stay in a homestay in Karnataka and enjoy bit by bit personally.