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Deepika Belapurkar is overwhelmed by nature as she soaks in the lush green serene clime of Coorg
 The genesis of River Cauvery in Coorg, says the legend, begins with a promise when Goddess Cauvery, wife of sage Agastya, metamorphoses into a river and vows to return each year to nourish the land of her birth. And so she does, trickling into the sacred tank at Talacauvery in the Brahmagiri hills to clasp her 'children' to her bosom.
We are chased up the temple steps by a recalcitrant cloudburst to Shiva's abode, from where we watch the elusive Cauvery and her followers clasped in an eternal bond. The tank water is adrift with a flotsam of flowers and coconut shells, and its surface tinged a blood red, the deepest shade of vermilion.
 From near this ancient shrine we slug it up to the Brahmagiri peak. Pardon the conclusion, but the seven sages who had meditated here at 4,500 feet many eons ago must obviously have chosen this spot for its views, a tumbling vastness of blue hills. Their soft beguiling contours frame thickly forested valleys and the lushest of fertile fields in a swirling haze.
 A few kilometers apart, yet another set of faithfuls prostrate in front of a Shivalingam under carved wooden awnings. The Bhagamandala temple's pillars depict stories from the Puranas. At her sacred sangam here, with rivers Kannike and Sujyothi, we too reunite with the self-willed Cauvery, before driving off towards Orange County in Sidappura completely cured of our myopic vision of a life on the fast track. Evening brings with it comforting warmth and unbelievable cheer; the snug Tudor-styled cottages are enormously private and that night we leisurely indulge in a supper befitting a king before the languor of sleep takes over. Haunting images of the mist-laden meadows return unbidden: a sweet chorus of cowbells...a shepherdess and her wayward charges, wet willowy figures pervious to the merry song of the ebbing rain.
Old-world rituals
 Who cares about night-long showers as long as the morning is sun basked? Obviously then, a plantation tour at Orange County is a foregone conclusion. The sweetly perfumed flowering coffee bushes huddle beneath silver oaks towering to a height of 80 and 100 feet. Amongst the delicately spiralling pepper vines, jewelled woodpeckers are busy as hell while hornbills noisily flounce in the top canopy. It's easy to lose oneself in the fragrant cardamom bushes and fruit orchards.
Go on and dribble away the hours at the ideal getaway of your dreams. Unless a visit to an ancestral home (Ain Mane), is on your agenda as well. We discover in Devangiri a mere handful of homesteads quietly basking among spindly palms and shady tamarind trees. Nature has, presumably with great joy, bared her womb to the seasonal swing and received in turn a shake-over of lustrous greens.
From a deep verandah fringing Nanda Pemaya's four-winged, red-tiled Ain Mane we watch young paddy on his ancestral land rhythmically swishing to the whims of a truant wind. Indoors, the poorly lit rooms wear raftered ceilings, verdigris pillars and beaten earth floors, and their walls sacred brass wall-lamps. While most erstwhile okkas (joint families) have fragmented into nuclear homes, deceased members still live on in Coorgi rituals of ancestor worship. In fact, there is a certain earthiness to these rituals, a kind of endearing quality to their absorbing faith.
Lush green, fertile, intensely picturesque, South Coorg is indeed a soubriquet to eternal beauty. By the time we cover the six kilometers to Virajpet at the foot of Maletambiran Hill we are reeling over with unopposed appreciation. The township is very easily Coorg's pulse and home to the gentry as well to crazy traffic snarls. This is not to say there aren't any unobtrusive homes – plenty, all flaunting without reservation the famous Coorg hospitality.
Beyond imposing gates and past sweeping driveways, a perfect foil to the inquisitive stares of outsiders, sprawling estates recluse across Coorg. Families with pedigree lineage reside within the ivory-castle isolation of these whitewashed bungalows. Most are very old structures residing among even older trees, seemingly as old as the earth itself. The lawns are bursts
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