Chitra Aiyer

Itchy Feet is one of those blogs that I completely love. It is written and maintained by Charukesi. I ran into Charu’s work first on flickr; from flickr, I went to her blog. I have known her on various social forums and even met up with her a couple of months ago.

There was this 1 post of hers that is my favorite and the minute I read that I realised I simply had to write about her and Itchy Feet on my own blog. Why - what was it about that post? Typically, we only hear what the person writing about a place thought of the place - how much he/she enjoyed it, what he/she did there. But here was a post that was very different from all of that. Here she was writing about how local kids in Sikkim went to school traversing through its mountainous terrain - she was able to look at it from their point of view, almost removing herself from the scene. It was also about children and education - 2 things that are very close to my heart combined with travel, another thing that is again very close to my heart. So, to me, that post won me over. It is wonderful to be able to paint a picture to the reader about some aspect of local life. Charu, being the good observer she is, does that so well for her readers. And not to mention, her pics are always fabulous - lovely tones and light in them. So here I am, introducing Charu and her travel blog.

Charu with her husband overlooking the Gurudongmar lake, Sikkim

She started blogging in late 2003. Blogging was a fairly new thing then and apparently she was encouraged by a friend to start. She started off writing a general blog - http://indsight.org/blog where she used to write regularly about social issues, especially gender and education - and advertising/marketing. She also used to post her travel stories on that blog and over a period of time found that she was writing more and more about her travels and so decided to start a separate travel blog dedicated to her travel stories and photography. That is how ‘Itchy Feet’ came to happen. When she started writing travel stories for publications, she found that this blog was a good place to post those stories for the record.

She calls herself an accidental photographer - she has a basic digital camera and goes about taking photographs with it - “they are mostly a record of my travels” she says. But her pics speak a thousand words, though that idiom is a cliche, one must only see her pics to get a feel of her travels. Well seen, and well shot … capturing the essence of any place.

Says Charu, “When I travel, I enjoy - and try to do it as much as possible - walk around the place to get a feel of it - find new shops, lanes, eateries - and I definitely like to sample local cuisine, as authentic as possible.” And you experience all of what she does through her beautiful narratives.

When asked to pick a spot that has taken her breath away, she says “this is a toughie… that must be the Angkor temples in Cambodia - not the Angkor Wat itself but the smaller temples -  especially Ta Phrom - where ancient trees hold the temple in their grip - it is a truly awesome sight - sends shivers down my back…”

Ta Phrom temple

Visit Itchy Feet to get more of Charu’s travel stories.

Note: Both the pics posted here are Charu’s. Please do not use them without permission.

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Here’s President Obama delivering Diwali wishes. He even has a why we celebrate Diwali bit in it. So, I will post the video and wish you all health, happiness, and prosperity this Diwali season.

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Oct 2nd long weekend - we had nothing on the cards. But a long weekend, and not go on a road trip? So, well, we got to pouring on the maps. My eyes kept hovering over Sagar in Shimoga - the famous Jog falls are in Sagar. And luckily for us, I thought then, we found a lovely homestay that was somewhere around Thirthahalli. Given a choice, we’ll pick home-stays any day over hotels. Why? Will leave that for another blog post. Well, it so happened that the family running the homestay had to deal with an emergency and wasnt going to be in town. So, we had to quickly look for another place of stay. This was a long weekend, and everything was taken. And just as we were reconciling to staying in the city for the long weekend and doing day-trips, I found another promising home-stay that hadnt shown earlier in my various online searches - it only showed up when I kept tweaking my search queries - Ammadi homestay. Luckily for us, they still had a couple of rooms left.

So, off we went to Koppa via Shimoga early next morning. Ashwin, from the home-stay, with whom I was in touch, called us at least 3 times during our drive. He was making sure we were alright and on the right route. The entire route was pretty, but after we turned left at Shimoga, the drive was awesome. That is a lovely route with whizzing green scenic landscape. The road for the most part is nice and the drive was smooth. The Ghats were beautiful and the little villages that interspersed throughout this route were ‘Malnad‘y cute and full of character. We stopped way more than expected to take it all in. There were many water bodies along this road, full of water and water-lilies! Beautiful! The entire day had been cloudy, pleasant and that made the landscape/drive lovelier and more romantic.

After stopping at the dam at Gajanur for a little while, we arrived at Ammadi homestay. The pic below is how we first saw the house. A lovely huge green house amidst paddy fields and arecanut plantation. We saw a couple of people wave at us from the house.

We drove up the curved path along the paddy fields to the house. Our hosts, the owner, Mr. Srinivas, his 2 sons - Ashwin and Kishan and a his daughter-in-law, Chaitra were at the entrance to welcome us in.

Ammadi is a lovely old traditional home, maintained well with all of its local rich architectural elements intact. The main door opens out to the courtyard you see below. Very lovely and well-maintained.

Here’s the corridor that surrounds the courtyard. The pillars supporting the roof and the detailing on them reflect the old architecture. There are many little windows that open to the beautiful outsides. My daughter is doing a butterfly sprint in the pic below.

We were led upto our rooms on the top floor. They have rooms inside the house on the top floor and again on the top floor facing the outside. If you go to Ammadi, definitely choose the rooms facing the outside - those that are outside the main house. It is these rooms that are private and have attached bathrooms. The inside ones are cozy and well maintained, but do not have attached baths. Also, the 4 rooms inside the house are separated by partition walls and have a common ceiling, robbing the rooms of sound-privacy.

My son in the corridor overlooking the courtyard.

The family is very cordial and the four of them took care of all the guests with a lot of care. They are new to this business, having started to run the house as a homestay only since Aug this year. Mr. Srinivas has lived in this house all his life. It used to house a huge family with lots of people. His father was a landlord who extended the house to anybody who needed shelter. Needless to say, there are many stories tied to the house. Srinivas is a kind-hearted man who shared many a stories with us during our stay. His sons and daughter-in-law visit Ammadi on many weekends. Together, they make a great team to host people, serving homely food and always having a word to exchange with you. They never hesitated to share whatever they knew of the house and about the beautiful surrounds. They gave valuable suggestions for things we could do during our stay there. Oh and I loved both their coffee and tea.

Mr. Srinivas’ wife passed away a couple of years ago. However, you will see a lot of her in the house; all of her art work adorn this beautiful old house. She has taken the effort to showcase all their family heirloom things around the house. The courtyard itself is her conception. Otherwise, traditional courtyards, while are beautiful do not transform into garden havens. The courtyard by far is what won me over from the start. During our stay, there were many monsoon drizzles/rains, and sitting and watching the rain was a favorite activity. There were other parties staying there while we were there; but the courtyard corridors offer everybody a spot to themselves. My husband and I enjoyed a nice long chat late one night, long after the kids were asleep when it rained in the courtyard. Lovely!

Things we did in the neighborhood: We went to Kuppali, the renowned Kannada poet Kuvempu’s place of birth. It is a lovely place - the beautiful hillscape in the neighborhood is what is supposed to have inspired his poetry and well, not surprising at all. We also visited the Sringeri temple on the banks of the river Tunga (read here) and drove up to the beautiful Sirimane waterfalls. We also visited a gurukul that is run in Hariharapura, near Kuppa. I will cover all of these visits in separate posts.

Kuppalli

Agumbe is near here, and while it is on top of our list to see a sunset there, we gave it a miss this time around. Apparently you hardly see anything this time of the year there, coz of all the fog. Jan is a good time to go see sunsets there. So, we said, ‘ok, Jan maybe’. And apparently the Kundhadri hills are very pretty too. Though this trip started off with us wanting to go see the Jog, we didnt do that - Jog is at least 2 hrs away from here. So yeah, Shimoga surrounds are going to be seeing some more of us.

The day we left, it was raining there. The children grabbed the umbrellas and were in the courtyard enjoying the rains. As long as their heads remained dry, it was ok for them to stay in the rains I said. They loved the Malnad rains - running in and out of the courtyard and to the front yard.

Overall, a wonderful stay. Ammadi homestay stays true to the term ‘homestay’.

Do you like the Malnad region? Do you have a favorite place there? Do share - I would love for us to head out.

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All pics used here are mine. Please do not use them without first asking me.

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