Coorg: the hills I keep coming back to

I have been to Coorg four times in four years, and I could not tell you a single thing I "did" on the last three.

That is not a failure of memory. It is the entire reason the place works. Every other destination on this site took planning, permits, a season, or a flight. Coorg takes a decision made on a Thursday afternoon.

The one you can leave for on a whim

Most travel writing about Kodagu treats it as a weekend itinerary — Abbey Falls, Raja's Seat, the golden temple, a homestay with a plantation tour. You can do all of that. I did most of it on the first visit, in 2022, tacked onto the end of a two-week loop through the Malnad and down to the coast.

The three visits since were better, and none of them had a plan.

What Coorg has that nothing else on my map has is proximity. It is the nearest place to Bengaluru where the air changes. That single fact turns it from a destination into something more useful: a place you can go without the trip becoming an event.

Cookie comes too

The real test of a nearby place is whether the dog can come.

Cookie is a German Shepherd, which is the part that decides it. A small dog travels almost anywhere — a carrier, a cabin, a hotel that does not ask too many questions. A shepherd does not. She needs a vehicle rather than a seat, space in the back rather than a corner of the room, and somewhere at the other end that genuinely means it when it says dogs are fine.

Anywhere further and she stays behind, which means boarding, which means the trip needs to justify itself. Coorg is inside the radius where I can put her in the Hilux and go. That is not a small detail — it is most of the reason the count is four and not one.

If you have a dog and you have been treating travel as something that happens around them, find your version of this. The nearest hills you can drive to with the animal in the back are worth more than a better place you have to leave them for.

Four visits, no itinerary

Here is what the last three actually looked like: drive up, arrive by afternoon, sit outside, work for a few hours, walk somewhere, sleep early, drive back.

That sounds like nothing. It is the closest thing I have to a routine, and it is where a surprising amount of thinking about the businesses has happened — not because I went there to work, but because a place you know well stops demanding your attention. There is nothing left to look at. What is left is whatever you brought with you.

Stay outside Madikeri. The town is a junction with traffic and a viewpoint everyone stops at; the coffee estates either side of it are the reason to come.

What it is actually for

I wrote this on one of those nights, and I still think it is right:

Nights are for deep thoughts. It is chilling to imagine being alone, leaving everyone — but it has its own meaning.

Coorg is where I got comfortable with that. Not dramatic solitude, not a retreat — just enough distance from the city, often enough, that being on my own stopped feeling like an absence and started feeling like the point.

Somewhere close by will do this for you too. It almost certainly is not the place with the best photographs.