A Short- Visit to Kushal Nagar, Karnataka

Last Sunday, along with my friends Geo, Dills and Jinju, I made a journey to the Tibetan settlement in Kushal Nagar, Karnataka. Someone said, “Focus on the journey, not the destination.” In our trip, it does not mean the place which we visited is a bad one; instead it is an important place because of the cultural and political significance of the area. However, as we did not plan the trip, we could not spend much time, barely half an hour in the destination.

There is somewhat 100 kilometers from Iritty to Kushal Nagar; even though we did not have any idea about the distance or the condition of the roads, we started the journey in motor bicycles from the presumption that we can reach there within two hours. Chilling rain, poor roads turned the drive a miserable one.

We started at 11.30 and reached there at 4 pm. On the way, as the condition of roads was really bad in some places, we fell from the bike and had to buy a new pair of jeans for my friend. Once we reached Kushal Nagar, we went to a hotel to have food (had Chicken Biriyani in fact!). As the rain became stronger and we need to get back to our homes as soon as possible (Geo had to reach Kottiyoor), we returned from the Golden Temple after spending barely half an hour.

We took some photos, of course, and could see some nice girls (one of the objective of the game), it was not that much satisfactory. The return trip was awful. It was raining! Though the rain stopped pouring after sometime, light mist started clouding the road through the forest. However, we slowly came down through the cloudy forest. Once we reached the Karnataka check post, it was around 7.45. The policemen in the check post demanded the documents such as driving license, which unfortunately only one of us had at the time. The officer then said, he won’t let us pass the road without the document. He asked us to pay INR 1000 as compensation, but after some ‘bargaining’ we paid INR 200 and left. We reached Iritty somewhat at 8.30. There weren’t any buses at that time to Peravoor-Kottiyoor route, so our friends, Dills and Jinju took us to Peravoor; from there Geo went to his home and me in my home.