A Coorg Getaway- the Tibetan settlement in Bylakuppe, Kushalnagar

We decided to put the series of holidays in this week to maximum use and head to Coorg or Kodagu. The taxi driver pulled out at the last moment and we gingerly took up the gauntlet to drive the odd 270 kilometres all the way to Coorg. It was a decision which sparked much concern and confusion from R and me; ours is a 10+ year old car, nowhere near top condition, never taken for such long rides, lots of dents, bumps and scratches, and to top it all, no A/C!.  On the pros side, we both could drive in turns and the car was our trusted foot soldier since our courtship days and it would be our first road trip. Thus at night 10'o clock, we finally decided to take the plunge and place our trust in our rickety car to take us all the way to Coorg. At night 10.30, we were frantically looking at Google Maps, Google Earth and all other possible resources to identify the route; yes, we dint know the 'how to' part of the getaway. I searched and searched for a good free GPS app and finally gave up.

We set out before the crack of dawn at 5.00. The road was smooth and devoid of any traffic. Till Srirangapatna we had absolutely no confusion, it was a straight road. After that at major junctions, we asked the locals for help whenever in doubt. I learnt that the best GPS is to ask around! Never once did we lose our way till we reached Madikeri. We reached the Tibetan settlement  in Bylakuppe at around 10.30. Bylakuppe comes 4 kms before Kushalnagar. It is home to the second largest Tibetan settlement in India.

Bylakuppe, of the Tibetan settlement

 We headed straightaway to the Golden temple and the Namdroling monastery. It is a 4 Km drive  from the main road.The place was swarming with visitors. The Golden temple is an imposing structure, visible from a long way off. The monastery has monks of all ages staying and studying there. Inside the temple, there are 60 feet tall idols of 3 Buddhist gurus. The walls are decorated with murals depicting the life of various gurus. The paintings are intricately done beautifully in vibrant colours.

The first look

The 60 feet tall idols of 3 Buddhist gurus

Young monks in prayer

The intricate doors with murals of guardians on either side

The interplay of light and colours

A female deity

There were two things about the paintings which struck me. One was the depiction of female deities in the paintings. The second thing was depictions of evil spirits/ deities in some of the murals. Both these are owing to my ignorance of Buddhism, but from a layman's point of view, I was quite struck by it as I was unaware of  any female Buddhist goddesses. Also I also associated Buddhism with peacefulness
and hence was surprised to find depictions of menacing figures on the walls.

A mural of one with a fierce countenance

Purple through and through

We did see this interesting plant on the monastery grounds. It had purple leaves in addition to purple flowers.












Within the monastery compound there is a shop selling curios, Tibetan fans, trinkets, hangings etc. It is managed by 2 monks.

Trinkets, I wanted to buy every one of them!

Good luck charms

The Tibetan houses within the settlement prominently display multicoloured Buddhist prayer flags. I thought they were simply plain flags but a closer look showed they had prayers written on them.

Prayer flags fluttering in the breeze

Prayer flags in close-up

 The Tibetan cause invariably finds resonance in the minds of the settled people, as is evident from this girl sporting a t-shirt with 'Save Tibet' logo.

Championing their cause

You can spend hours together inside the various temples which are less crowded by tourists. The grounds of the monastery are vast and fit for a peaceful stroll.

Another look at the temple

The Final word: It is a must see for any tourist to Coorg.

God in his 'own country'

Oh I just couldn't hold back the twitching in my fingertips to blog this. :)

"God in his own country", that was how one TV channel chose to hail the arrival of Diego Maradona in Kerala. After all, Kerala is called 'God's own country' and for the football crazy Keralites,  football legend Maradona is no less than god.

Sitting 400 miles away from Kannur, where Maradona has landed, even I feel the excitement that he is there in Kerala. TV channels are running whole 30 minutes segments on Maradona on the occassion. People have travelled from places hours away  to catch a glimpse of him in the wee hours of the morning. A young man in the airport who was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of him described it as "an indescribable feeling". There is probably no other person whose arrival can trigger such excitement and passion. Viva Maradona.

Another Dasara festival, that means its been a year nd more

I was clicking pics of the Dasara celebrations in my office, suddenly I realized that I had put up Dasara pics of the 2011 Dasara. that means this blog has been around for more than a year now... I'm thinking to myself, "wow, that's amazing". I dint really think I was going to persevere so long with this blog!

The ladies in the office were generally busy; cooking lunch, tidying up the place, applying vermilion on everything in sight, decorating the goddess' picture. The men were busy getting the 'take home' sweet packets ready and decorating the vehicles.


Here,our office assistant is applying vermillion on the cupboard. When she came in, there was already a vermillion mark on it and she was offended that someone beat her to it. We informed her that it was there from last year's Dasara and she happily rubbed it off before reapplying this year's mark.

This is the one on the door...

Well, nothing much is spared, even the vehicles. This one's got it on the tyres too...

The ladies were busy applying rangoli..

 .... and this is how it finally turned out...

...they had a busy time decorating the place....

The mango tree leaves are strung up for auspicious occasions, this time accompanied by a garland of chrysanthemum flowers

No 'Ayudha puja' is complete without the cucumber. So innocuous looking, this one, but its fate later on is interesting.

As you can see, there is a triangular cut made on one side. A triangular wedge is cut out, the resulting hole is filled with pink 'Kumkum' powder and 1 or 2 rupee coins. a piece of camphor is placed on the top, which is later burnt, as we will see later....


Another important player, the lemon, which is placed under the wheels of all vehicles. After the pooja, the vehicles are made to run over the lemon. The driver in the pic is placing a lemon under the wheels of his vehicle.

The 'David and Goliath situation', going down under.....

The bikes are also given their turn at this face-off.

The pujari takes his time with the puja, first the goddess....

...then her other instruments....

Now comes the times the much anticipated time for the kids who had assembled... He looks to the skies with a small prayer to appease the goddess with the cucumber and the lighted camphor.... (if you look closely in the pic, you can see the flame of the camphor burning on the cucumber)

The kids are getting ready too...for the coins inside the cucumber...

Now's the moment...he raises his hands dramatically and smashes the cucumber on the ground...The kids pounce on each other to collect the coins...

All this was topped with a sumptuous lunch afterwords, prepared by Shobha and co. ... too bad my hands were too engrossed in my plate to hold a camera :).

This pic is the cooking team at work.


Happy Dasara to one and all...

Quote for the day

This is something which had me thinking and laughing at the same time. Told by someone, reported to me by my colleague Dr.Mailarappa:-

"A curative specialist can save one life, where as a public health person can save thousands of lives at a time.
A curative specialist can kill one person while a public health person can kill thousands!! "

Thats the beauty of public health.

From light to darkness, lead me

"Tamaso maa jyotirgamaya"

(Lead me from darkness to light )

This famous part of a sloka I already knew from my childhood. I was surprised to find that this mantra was used in the soundtrack of The Matrix trilogy. This kind of piqued my interest and thanks to wikipedia, I read about the various Vedas and found that this sloka is from Brhadaranya Upanishad. And these were composed in the BC period, before 5th Century BC, tentatively around 1000-600 BC! (source- Wikipedia).
It is thought that even Plato and Kant's have been influenced by them (source- Wikipedia).


Having learnt a little bit of Sanskrit in school, I can pick out the words, thought not really string them together. Tamas - darkness, Maa -I/ Me, Jyothi -light, Gamaya - make go/ lead.

 Coming to think of it, it has a meaning at different levels; physical and philosophical- from known to unknown, from ignorance to knowledge.

On a lighter note.....a 'before'  and 'after' pic led me to this post. We had a power outage. Just as I finished clicking a pic of the candle and make-shift candle stand, the electricity came back on, giving me an 'after' pic.

 

The candle stand is actually an upside-down penstand :)

It was a gift from my BIL, from Singapore.

The design looked kind of garish and pretty and I clicked a few more from up-close. You can actually see the melted candle on top!