My World of Food and Travel

There are two things we always look for while settling for a hotel or homestay – affordability and environment. Affordable, as we would not want to spend much time in the hotel. Hence, for us an expensive resort with its numerous facilities and amenities do not hold much attraction; we would rather be exploring the world outside. Environment, because we want to treat the whole journey and the stay as an experience, more so if the hotel/homestay/resort is located away from the hubbub, preferably in the midst of nature, with very few distractions.  On these two counts, Honey Valley Estate scored premium points when we were looking for a place to stay two nights during our sojourn in Coorg. I did a little research on it, as is my habit, and found that most of the people who had stayed there described the place as a ‘piece of paradise’. Now, we had a not-so-happy time at a homestay in Chikmagalur last year for which people had used the same epithet. Since then, we tend to take ho...

We had been planning a visit to Coorg since the time we shifted to Bangalore 3 years back. Coorg was to us a beautiful collage of blue mountains clad in mist, shimmering waterfalls and rolling coffee estates. Finally, this March (2013) we decided that we had enough of pining and gawking at others' pictures on Facebook. Time we visited the region ourselves! Besides, Bangalore had turned too hot and we wanted a respite from it. My parents were also visiting and we thought the cool climes of Coorg shall be the best getaway from the city for a weekend. We booked our stay at Honey Valley Estates for 2 nights and made a crisp itinerary. This time, the husband played the role of the researcher as I was too busy with office work. A number of prominent tourist sights had to be left out as it would have been quite hectic and tiresome to cover all of them within a span of two and a half days. Especially as we had our 17 month old tyke and my sister's 15 month old son with us ...

  We were in Coorg (Kodava district) last week and the region’s beauty just blew our minds away. As did its amazing cuisine – especially, the spicy Pandi Curry. It was a pork curry like no other I had tasted.  I should mention that my initiation to pork took place only after my marriage some 3 years back. In my life prior to marriage, I was brought up to believe that the pig was not a nice animal to have as food. All thanks to my dad whose favourite expletive was ‘ Suwar ka bachha’ (Son of a Pig).   The word pig, thus, would evoke in my mind visions of fat, grunting pigs wallowing in filthy water.   No, not a nice animal to eat, for sure. I had built up such a mental block against it that even when my friends and cousins spoke of pork with drooling mouths, I was not a bit tempted. People who knew I was from North East India would be surprised at my aversion to pork. “What? You don’t eat pork?” was the common refrain. All that changed after I got mar...