Tala Kaveri - the river begins here?

Madikeri was where we wanted to spend the nighton the 30th. Instead, stayed at Kukke. I forgot why!! This small beautiful Coorg town lies in the Western Ghats and is a popular hill station. It lies at an altitude of 1,170 meters. The nearest cities are Mangalore to the west, and Mysore to the east. The river here is called Hemavathi. Our driver coaxed us to go toMysore from there. But when we calculated the time left for us and the enrgy level was getting low, we decided to skip that long drive.

Tala Kaveri(Cauvery):

Is 7 km from Bhagamandala and about 40km from Madikeri. The drive was picturesque. We stopped once and took some photos. It is situated on the slopes of the Brahmagiri hills.



This is the origin of river Kaveri on the eastern slopes of Brahmagiri peak at an altitude of 1350meters . An enclosure around the spring called Gundige is connected to a small pond. The water from the pond goes underground and comes out after about one kilometer down the hill. There are three shrines above the spring and birds eye view of west-coast from the hill range. You have to climb quite a few steps to reach the top and have the bird's eye view. Only Rao took that adventure trip. Nirmala and I stayed near the pond and chatted with an elderly man about his childhood etc.

It was extremely beautiful here also. But we were getting hungry. So, we started our return journey to Mangalore. We found only one place to eat. I ordered yogurt rice. The driver had a luxury meal. My meal was from the refrigerator. It was ice cold.
It was already Dec 1st, Saturday. We were scheduled to take a train to Ernakulam, Kerala on Monday, Dec 3rd at 4 a.m.

I woke up in the middle of the night. My stomach felt funny. My mouth tasted ugly. I started throwing up several times. Did not want to disturb my companions who were tired and fast asleep. Nirmala was very much concerned in the morning. We waited till the drug store accross from the hotel was open. She accompanied me to the medical shop. The owner of the store was very helpful. Gave me two types of medicines. One to stop the vomitting and the other to cure the symptoms. I felt very weak, but much better. Emotionally, very down, angry and so on - due to the medicines! Moral of the story - don't eat yogurt rice of that type while travelling in India.

By the way, in my haste to finish the post about Karnataka, I missed mentioning a few other temples that we visited. Jain Temple, which was closed by the time we reached, Thrilokeswara, Gorakshanatha and Ayyappa temples. Sorry that I have no recollection of the details.
The driver picked up his fee and tip and was gone. We hired different transportation to go to the train station in the morning.
I want to mention that each and everyone that we came across in Mangalore was nice and very polite.

This ends our Karnataka trip.