Hermitage Trip-The Arrival

April 5^th, 6th, 7^th, a long weekend was heading and I was in no mood to stay at home.
Phantom plans were made for Kerala >Munnar, Thekkedy , Allepey ;Banglore>Manglore ; Vizag>Araku and Sakaleshpura.Every other day my browser had around 5+ tabs opened to R&D and visualize these places. All failed to kick start due to various reasons. However, I was destined to travel and eventually Belgaum trip started taking shape.

A group of seven people > MiniY, Abhi-k,Abhi-w,Amanchi, Billu, Sid( aka TeofKap) & myself decided to venture out in the nature. We all walked down to Begumpet station on 4^th evening and boarded the Rayalaseema express sleeper coaches. All through the journey the "traditional" antakshri was played.Later Billu , his radioic Nokia & Abhi-W entertained us with Mukesh, Rafi ,& Kishore’s songs.Other half of journey was consumed by playing cards.

We reached Belgaum on 5^th morning around 12 PM.Boarded the prebooked jeep and started towards Hermitage guest house-Khanapur, located 45kms from the railway station. On the way we made our “Reached safely” home calls and enjoyed the small town peaceful looks of Belgaum.

After an hour or so we were off the main road, into the woods.
After 15 minutes, we were on the bumpy kachha rasta and in more denser area of the woods.
After another 10 minutes all of us feared - are we kidnapped? The “rasta” altogether was gone & we were sneaking deeper into the jungle.Among all of us only MiniY was the kidnapable entity. She was the one carrying all the money and having a 600 $ SLR cam. While others were the inutile ones with just 2 digi-cams and comparatively less or nil money in their pockets. To our relief we saw some kind of fencing (apparently it was electrical) and a way towards small gate.

Welcome to Hermitage guest house.

The next moment made my day and spoiled others: D. Three unchained ferocious beasts-Dobermans greeted us with their loud barks (they were shhoooo shweeet) and off course the actual hosts David, Morvarid (the wife) & Katrina (the daughter) welcomed us.

Hermitage is a well-appointed and secluded working farm set amidst the lush forests of the Western Ghats. If you are a Wildlife enthusiast or Nature Watcher, keen on Birding in India, a Nature Photographer, enjoy Trekking, or just simply love the outdoors, then the Hermitage is a perfect holiday destination .It is a small family run concern offering you an individual service.

The whole area (including few farms) is surrounded by electrical fences (900 V not sure of this figure) for protection from wild animals .The residential area has three independent units named “The Machan”- Tree house, “The Kadaba”-Village home, “The Gota”-rural cottage ( only one with attached bathroom).And a common dinning lounge.
Machan and Kadaba have open air bathrooms. Though the rooms from outside appeared like village huts, inside they were fully furnished and very well decorated with authentic showpieces. There was detailing to everything and all was so theme oriented. The open air bathing interior was nothing less that a 5 start hotel setup with all pipelines, water supply ,commode, tiles and drainage system in tact.In short the place had all the comforts of city and earthiness of a village.

We all loved the place at first sight. We explored our surroundings, did some photo shoots and finally settled down to have lunch. The food was yummy- Solomon fish, corn salad, brown rice, juice, vegetables all was cooked in different styles by Mori.
Later, on return it was all shown on the weighing machine.

PS: Three more posts to come on this trip, namely

Hermitage Trip- The Bear hill trek
Hermitage Trip- The River Trek
Hermitage Trip- The Departure

PS1: Will cover Mini’s twisted ankle and
PS2: Billu & TeofKap’s competition /struggle/ to impress Kats (the daughter) story in next post
PS3: Also Sid’s wane attempts to influence David with his 10k run T-Shirt.
PS4: Wow I just got an idea –PS3, 4 will tempt people to read the next post which will actually contain more about Badmash and other dogs: D
PS5: And PS4 will do exactly the reverse.
PS6: Whatever!!
PS7: Oh yes I have a video (with more audio effect) where the dogs attack me; Release only on demand.
PS 8: Gosh, I am a desperate campaigner.