The Perfect Road Trip: Our not-so-perfect yet perfect honeymoon!

Abhay and I got married on November 29^th, 2012. Before marriage, like all couples very much in love, we also discussed our honeymoon plans. But, nothing materialized because sweet-nothings would always cloud the so called serious “honeymoon” discussions. So, even on the day of our marriage, we hadn’t decided where we ought to head for our honeymoon.

Like in case of most marriages, our marriage was also followed by a series of functions that continued till December first week with a few breaks here and there. During this time, we had to visit both our natives to finish off every ritualistic commitment we had, which we finished quite successfully, barring the fact that we travelled back to Bangalore with me suffering from a bout of food poisoning.

Abhay had applied for leave till December 17^th and it was already December 11^th and we hadn’t planned our honeymoon yet. To top it, he was super skeptical about travelling to far off places because of the food poisoning his new wife, yours truly “me” had suffered earlier. So, we dropped our initial plans of going to either Maldives or Andaman or Kerala (these weren’t planned actually, we only mentioned these in bits and pieces whenever we found time from our sweet-nothings and decided to get some serious talking done about our honeymoon plan).

On December 12^th, we settled for a resort in Chikmagalur – The Serai. Also, since we knew that in the near future, we had to travel to the United States, we dropped all other options eventually and Chikmagalur in Karnataka seemed the apt option, with it being close enough to Bangalore in case we had to return considering my food poisoning incidence.

So, after all the initial jitters, we finally left for Chikmagalur on December 14^th morning in a Santro Xing with my husband acting as the chauffeur and no other companions for obvious reasons. :D As my husband didn’t want to take the usual Tumkur road, we took the Bangalore-Mangalore Highway, from where our destination was about 260 km.

Here, comes our first adventure. On our way, he missed a turn somewhere because he was mesmerized by his beautiful wife sitting besides him or so I want to think, but the reason was that he had missed looking at the direction board right in front of him. If this was not enough, instead of asking people around for the route, my tech savvy husband switched on the GPS on his IPhone and well, Siri rerouted us to roads that led to villages that we hadn’t even heard of before. Finally, one villager gentleman gave us the nearest route and we exited to the highway amidst herds of cows and sheep blocking our way every 10 minutes. My husband’s reaction was: “GPS works very well in the US”. My reaction was: 0_o.

Finally, we did reach Chikmagalur with no mentionable adventures happening in the time frame. The route to Chikmagalur was scenic with greenery all around due to the coffee estates they have in abundance. The weather was at its romantic best and we spent two days exploring the resort and its activities and I had a surprise in store for me on the night of Dec 15^th - a candle light dinner under a banyan tree with some exotic food and an awesome weather. I blushed away to glory. But again,  I had a bout of food poisoning after-effects returning to spoil our stay a wee bit.

The Serai

The next day, Dec 16^th, we left the resort early so that we could drive down a few places near Chickmagalur before heading back to Bangalore. Abhay fiddled with the idea of a lot of places and then we decided to go to Mullayanagiri which is the highest peak in Karnataka. I readily agreed knowing nothing about the place. As we headed towards the place, the roads on the snake-hill got narrower and narrower and our car was just struggling to pull us up the road, but it never failed us.

This is when our second adventure decided to meet us. The road being very narrow, it was very difficult for one vehicle to pass, and here, we had a Tata Sumo coming towards us from the opposite direction. Taking reverse was the only option we had but it was not a safe option considering we were at a very very high altitude on a very narrow road. At this moment, the only thing that was keeping me from vomiting was the fragrance coming from our car freshener. Somehow, after a lot of prayers to all the Gods I could think of and my husband’s driving skills, we reached the top of the hill. My heart was still in my mouth and was struggling to go back to its original place after the adventure we had just experienced. The news headline – “A couple on their honeymoon were gobbled up by the hills of Mullayanagiri” wasn’t what I was expecting. Thankfully, it didn’t happen to be that ways. After scolding the husband for around an hour for having gone to such a place on a honeymoon on such a suicidal road, we headed back to Bangalore.

Mullayanagiri and Halebidu

We stopped by Halebidu and saw the ancient temples and the stone carvings and headed back to Bangalore before it turned dark hoping we wouldn’t face another adventure on the way. Thankfully, we didn’t. It was late in the night that we reached Bangalore and with the adventure we had, we did nothing but retire to our bed with a smile on our faces for having survived the adventure, unscathed.

This was the most memorable road trip I have been a part of. My first road trip with my life companion, my dear husband was romantic, adventurous, and on the whole, a perfect honeymoon. 

*This post is written for "The PerfectRoad Trip" contest powered by Indiblogger and Ambi Pur (facebook.com/AmbiPurIndia).