Indian Eye

Trip to Coorg - en route

Coorg is around 270 kms from the Bangalore airport - the most convenient assembling point for the bloggers coming in from Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai. Depending on how good your transportation is and more importantly how good the roads are on that particular day, it could take anywhere between 6-8 hours to reach Coorg.

As the organiser, I arrived on the 29th of November, a day earlier to ensure that there were no last moment hiccups.

On the 30th, I informed the driver to park near the airport his Tempo Traveler, capable of carrying 15 passengers comfortably (or not so comfortably we realised later).

I had synchronized the flight schedules for the bloggers so that they would converge by 9:30-10 AM at the Bangalore airport. But as was expected, the overcongested Indian skies failed the clock once again. So the flights from Mumbai and Delhi were delayed by more than an hour. Fortunately, the Chennai flight was on time and all passengers (Kiruba, Sudhir, Shrinidhi, Dhruva) reached as scheduled. Also, the Delhi flight that was delayed by an hour also managed to scrape through, bringing in Dev and Mridula.
I was a little concerned about the Mumbai flight that was delayed and arranged for a back-up incase it got delayed further. I didn’t want to inconvenience the other bloggers who were waiting. But those concerns were put to rest, when the Mumbai flight finally arrived, and just in the nick of time because the rest of us had boarded the van. The Mumbai flight bought in Anil and his wife, and Apurva.

Dev and Dhruva in conversation

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Tags: Airport, Bangalore, Bloggers, Club Mahindra, Coorg, Flight, Kamat Lokaruchi, Travelers, Van

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Trip to Coorg - the travelers

Once the Club Mahindra Kodagu Valley resort in Coorg was finalised as the destination, choosing the travelers for the trip then became important. As was written in the earlier post, Kiruba and I got together and compiled a list of bloggers, photographers and writers in a couple of weeks. Some of these bloggers were known to Kiruba, and the rest I selected based on their popularity and relevance in the blogosphere.

Three of the bloggers couldn’t turn up, one because he had a committment with the university where he held sessions, and the other two for other personal reasons.

This was first of its kind in India where a group of bloggers from diverse backgrounds and interests were coming together, and being sponsored by a company in the hospitality industry.  All of them are very good in their area of blogging, and have earned a certain reputation in the Indian blogosphere.

Here are the list of travelers who attended the trip to Coorg :
Kiruba Shankar - The man needs no introduction if you are a blogger.
Dev Amritesh - Vice President(Marketing) with Dominos, a great entertainer, travel enthusiast and amateur blogger.
Mridula Dwivedi - Travel writer,  whose travel blog has been mentioned in the BBC, Guardian etc.
Anil P - Travel blogger, Photographer and author of 2 books.
Apurva Pandit - Blogger, and editor-in-chief of the popular pagalguy.com, a portal for aspiring MBA students.
Amoghavarsha - Talented photographer and blogger
Anita Bora - Travel blogger
Sudhir Syal - Blogger, has his own podcast called business bytes, and an alliance manager with Sulekha.com
Shrinidhi Hande - Blogger, who calls himself the professional amateur quite modestly.
Dhruva - RJ with the AIR, blogger and wildlife enthusiast
…and yours truly

Tags: Amoghavarsha, Anil P, Anita Bora, Apurva Pandit, Arun, Bloggers, Coorg, Dev Amritesh, Dhruva, Kiruba, Mridula, Shrinidhi Hande, Sudhir Syal, Travelers

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