Trip to Kabini, Connoor, Valparai

02-May-2023

Me and a couple of friends wanted to visit some places in and around Bengaluru, so we decide to start our short trip by driving down to Jungle Lodges and Resorts, Kabini River Lodge. The plan was to stay there for a night, go for couple of safaris and then continue.

We left Bengaluru around 6:00 AM and decided to make a halt at Somanathpura temple before continuing to Kabini.

Somanathpura is a Hoysala style temple and is in pretty good shape. We spent around an hour and half here before continuing on.

We continued on towards Kabini which was our next stop. We arrived in Kabini at around 1PM. We rested for some time and then went for our evening safari.

Jungle Lodges and Resorts Kabini is a pretty good property to stay here. Also if you want to do a jeep safari, they are the agency through which you have to go. If you are staying at other properties in Kabini, you would still have to go there for your Jeep safari.

We had planned on doing two safaris, one was on 2nd evening and the other was on 3rd morning. Our safaris were pretty good. We had a good sighting of leopard and some very good sightings of elephant herds. 

03-May-2023 After finishing the safari in the morning, we checked out and left Jungle Lodges and Resorts towards Coonoor. We stopped at Gundlupete for a quick lunch in a restaurant named Hotel Sri Guruprasad. The place was average.

We arrived in Coonoor around 5:30 PM and had booked our stay at Tea Nest. This was a bungalow in tea estate. It was pretty good accommodation.

We drove back to the town and had our dinner at 180Mciver. The place was horrible and was not worth the money.

04-May-2023 We got up in the morning and our plan was to drive to Sims Park where we spent almost an hour. We returned back to our hotel, got ready, checked out and were on our way to the next destination.

We stopped over in Coimbatore for lunch. We had heard great things about Annapoorna but by mistake we ended up in their outlet in Prozone Mall in Coimbatore. The food was not exception but ok. We had our lunch and then continued on towards Valparai.

The drive to Valparai is exceptional. The 40 odd hair pin bends make this drive great. The only issue was that there is no way one can stop on this segment of the road. In any case, we continued and arrived in Valparai around 4:15 PM. We had booked Sinne Dorai Bungalow for our stay.

We stayed here for two nights. The place is fantastic, and food was great. We also did a night drive through the estate and saw many animals in the estate.

06-May-2023 We checked out from Valparai and started our return journey to Bengaluru. We stopped over at Tiruppur to buy some clothes and then continued towards Bengaluru. We finally arrived in Bengaluru at 8:00 PM.