Webshots photo album

The rainy season in Coorg means, 24 hour cloud cover day after day after day..if you are a rain lover, this is place you have to be. .. but this also means a lot of 'fauna' of Coorg..the 350 odd bird species and all the wild animals are hidden from view, In case you are wondering what all things you can see here..here is a sample...



Coorg Slide Show..

Maintainence shutdown

This weekend (August 23rd) we decided to shutdown Bethel homestay. This is perhaps one of the very few weekends where we have not had guests in Bethel..however we think both the premises and the folks running it needed a break!! So this week we will not be following up with guests, no need to be 100 % focused.. it is a weekend for the staff :)

We will also be repairing/fixing the plumbing and in general prepping up the place. The cottages that are all fine are going to be used by us -- so the whole place is going to be occupied in one way or another..

We also are starting the preparation for the trekking season in Coorg, soon the rains will have stopped and the cold mist of the winter will start to rise. It will become the perfect time to go trekking and we are starting the preparations for the season.

We need to start sourcing/buying trekking equipment, preparing trekking routes, online campaigns etc.., the forests and hills of Coorg are the perfect places to go trekking but we have seen that 'perfect' trek needs a lot of preparation and planning at least on the side of the organizers and thats what we are starting now.

The Travellers...

Like I mentioned before we had a team from Chennai who had come for the August 8th weekend. They were Hari, Vinod, Kesavan, Chandra, Mahesh, Robin and Yogi. These folks were having a slow period at work and were making the most of it by traveling on the weekends to different places. This week it was Coorg and Bethel homestay.

They landed in Mysore on the morning of August 8th, a Friday. They were received by Arun. Arun took them through the Nagarhole forest. This was the week when there was tropical depression over the Indian peninsula, it was raining everywhere...but particularly heavily in Coorg. This is quite normal, a no rain day during the rainy season in Coorg means at least 1 inch of rainfall, a depression means havoc. By the time they reached Bethel, our folks got a good taste of what rain in Coorg means. On the way to the homestay, they decided to visit the Iruppu falls and then reach Bethel in time for Lunch.

Meanwhile in Bethel we were having problems, the other team folks of Ravi sir and his friends wanted to stay over for one more day, but we were full for the weekend between the two Hari's and could not accommodate them, with great reluctance we managed to send them of, it was not a pleasant experience for us, but we needed to do it because all the cottages had been booked in advance and we have to give priority to them!

Our folks landed in time for Lunch and had after that we decided that we will go for a the trek at 3 PM. While some of the folks had done trekking before, for many this was the first time, but inspite of the rain, they all joined in for the trek. Generally trekking in Coorg happens in winter and the dryer months of the year..the big reason for this is Leeches...there are lot of them in the forests of Coorg, these are generally harmless but to many their sight can be pretty unsettling, fortunately for us our trek path has few leeches, but all the folks who joined the trek got leech bites, but they were pretty sporty about it.

The next day they all went for Rafting with Arun, some of the folks were hydrophobes.. but they managed to muster their courage and generally had a great time. They went to Wayanad in the evening, they were not happy with the Wayanad trip. We generally time the Wayanad trip so that they pass through the forest at Dusk, this is the best time for animal sightings, how ever we kind of mistimed it, the Thirunelli temple was closed by the time they reached there.. and so they could not go down to the waterfall or sit and relax there and by the time they reached the forest it was a little too dark..they did manage to see a big herd of Bison though..

They left the next day to Mysore after breakfast as they wanted to spend some time there before they headed back to Chennai..

Unfortunately this time, our service was not as perfect as we would have liked it. At Bethel we focus on basics, clean..no.. Very clean washrooms, clean linen and surroundings and good food. We take particular care to ensure that these things are taken care of, however when Hari and folks came in they had issues with the washrooms, this surprised us because we had never seen these before.. it took us a while to realize what was happening.. the heavy rains in Coorg had saturated the underground water table we now had a Spring coming up from under two of our tents!!! The spring was affecting the draining of the water from the wash rooms, we had to ask the the folks to use the washrooms in other cottages..which were unused. It was a really an embarrassing experience for us :-(..and this also means some major plumbing work for us to ensure that this does not repeat again..

They gave us a reviews at HolidayIQ, check it out here

Thanks for the reviews guys, I hope you really enjoyed the stay..

Here they are, from Left to Right - Bala, Robin (Both in the back), Hari, Vinod, Mahesh, Yogi and Chandra

The Irony of the August 15th Weekend...

"...
Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face...
" -- Lyrics of Alanis Morissette's - Ironic

That in short is the story of our August 15th weekend...

The August 15th weekend was a long weekend, we had been completely booked almost a month and a half ago!! After that we spent a lot of time taking bookings for Nelgi and all the other places that we could send people to, and after that we spend an equally large amount of time telling people that we could not help them.... and come the weekend...all the places where we sent folks were full...but we ran barely half full...

The previous weekend ...the 'Hari' weekend was the week when we had the tropical cyclone over India.. this had wrecked havoc with the homestay..we realized that we were in a very poor shape to take in people, at least we will not be able to keep the standards of service that we are used to providing...so we had decided that we would cancel all bookings that we had refund the money or optionally offer them another date. We had Saket who we asked to cancel and he obliged, and Rahoul..who insisted that he would come!!!

We were really caught in a piquant situation...here was a guest who wanted to come even after hearing what state we were in.. What do we do!.. After a lot of discussion we decided lets leave it to Rahaoul, we will give him an absolutely clear picture of the state we are in..and thereafter it is his call.. As things turned out, Rahoul said he will come no matter what and so we would have some guests on the long weekend if not a full house.

All these discussion were happening in the seven days between August 7th and August 15th, as the week progressed the rains virtually stopped..and all of a sudden it became a perfect day in Coorg..and we were left with cancellations and empty cottages..while all our other homestays to whom we sent people were running full


"...
Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face...
"
Ironic isn't it ...

Blogging woes..

A few days ago Blogger took down this blog marking it as a spam blog!! Turns out that the Blogger spam-prevention robots look at the text and if they find a blog that keeps pointing back to the same url or webpage, then it marks it as a spam-blog!!

This blog is very important for the homestay and this kind of down time is unacceptable... so I have created a mirror blog at Wordpress.com and imported all the posts of this blog there. This way I will always have redundancy. Going forward, I will keep making posts to this blog and keep importing them to our Wordpress blog

Check out our blog http://bethelhomestay.wordpress.com

It uses the cool "ChaosTheory" template, I have also created categories to organize my posts.

1. Homestay operations -- Operational journals of the Homestay, How we do things ? Purchasing, Labor problems...

2. Whoz there.. -- Every day we have some one in the homestay, we make a post here to announce it. We try to get names of everyone who have come and post it here. We don't put any kind of identification information..no e-mail id.. no company names etc, mostly just first names and their photographs...

3. Geek Stuff -- Some of the geeky stuff involved with the online real estate of Bethel homestay i.e. Our website, blogs, SEO etc.

Tryst with destiny

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfill the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.


We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell. The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed! We rejoice in that freedom,

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy. And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service. Jai Hind


Jawaharlal Nehru, on the night of August 14th, 1947.
61 years later..still as relevant as it was then.

Rafting pictures..

Krishna and his team (Raghavendra Aithal, Raghavendra, Krishanaswamy B N, Manoj M N, Saji, Ashwin Srigiri and Girish Babu) were here to raft on the August 2nd weekend. These are the rafting photos taken by him

Here they are with Rakesh, seen left to right,
Raghavendra Aithal, Raghavendra, Krishanaswamy B N, Manoj M N, Rakesh(host), Saji.
Sitting - Ashwin Srigiri, Girish Babu



All their pictures can be seen here

The "Hari" weekend..

This weekend we had two teams in Bethel, in both of them the contact person for us was Hari!!

One team of 7 from Chennai (Hari, Vinod, Kesavan, Chandra, Mahesh, Robin and Yogi) and another from Bangalore which had 12 numbers)

As usual we had a surprise element too, Rajesh (Nelgi), Sampath had dropped in with a couple of friends of Ravi, in all they were 5 who had decided to raft and stop by for the night in Bethel on Thursday.

Night travelers..

Manjunath, Patthabhi and folks (our guests for the August 2nd weekend, Manjunath, Pattabhi, Vishwanath, Shailesh, Ravi, Vinay, Sunil and Avdooth ) started off from Bangalore on Friday night, they traveled overnight and were received by Arun at 5.30 AM in the morning.

We always ask our guests to give us a call the moment they start and we normally keep calling every few hours, this way we are able to make sure that folks don't loose their way, and it also helps us prepare for them. For example, if they have missed lunch, then we make sure when they arrive at Gonikoppal or Kutta or where ever we receive them, they have something to eat..Snacks, Chips ..whatever, something to munch on or we just have lime juice or something like that to refresh folks -- after all it is a 5 hour journey from Bangalore!! (btw we don't do this for night travelers :-) )

The guys then refreshed and helped themselves to a full breakfast and after that they went on the trek with Rakesh. Our trek with the estate is beautiful, but mild. It can be classified at most as a beginners trek, just enough for first timers to be stressed but not so much that they can't complete it. We normally come to know about the appetite for adventure of the guests when they do this trek. These folks were the adventerous type ... so our trek was pretty mild for them.

They went for the 3.30 PM rafting session, they had to wait because the 1 PM rafting team turned up late!! This is something we don't approve off -- making our guests wait for no fault of their own, it is our job as hosts to book the rafting slots upfront and make sure we arrive on time, and we take a lot of pains to make sure we do that, there is no reason why our guests should be penalized for being prompt. Rakesh made sure that the rafting folks knew of our displeasure

At night they settled down to a cozy campfire...and the next day they went back home the long way back to Bangalore, via Wayanad, Gundulpet..Bandipur forest with a stop over at the famous Iruppu falls

Photos that they took have been uploaded, the link to the album is here

Pattabhi has also give us a review in HolidayIQ, check it out here

Pattabhi, Thanks a lot for the review, It means a lot for us, and guys thanks for coming.

Here are some of their pics..

From left to right - Manju, Rakesh, Arun, Pattabhi, Vishwanath, Shailesh, Ravi, Vinay(Green Jacket), Sunil (sitting) and photographer is Avdooth


All dressed and ready to take the plunge..


Calm before the storm


The plunge....


Iruppu falls

Anil the Cautious

Old England had names like "William the Bold" or "John the Just"...Let me introduce you to ... "Anil the Cautious"

The booking for the second team on the 2nd August weekend was done by Dheeraj, I think he had read this blog and was convinced that he wanted to come here, After everything was confirmed, I sent over the account details to which the payments had to be made

The account we use is a personal ICICI SB bank account, the reason we use it is, simply convenience. It was already there and ICICI to ICICI fund transfer is instant and it is the most popular private bank -- so most of our guests have an account with them and we never had any issues with it. That is till now..

Dheeraj did not have an ICICI account and he had said he will find someone who does and transfer the funds through them. So come Friday morning I get a call from Anil, he points out that this account is a personal account..I say yes and clarify that homestays are not resorts and cannot have current accounts, Anil is not convinced..he says he is not comfortable with this arrangement and he will transfer only half the amount due, and the rest, he will give on site. Well, I thought that will have to do and said fine. As I went about my day, I thought, well, that's one cautious guy.

What..Just because a guy is prudent with online transfers, does he deserve to be titled thus on an blog !!! ..emm.. Well no..read on :-)

Dheeraj seemed to be familiar with Coorg and he had said he will be coming to Kutta . They wanted to do rafting immediately so they went to the Rafting site directly. There we collected the Rafting tariff from them and as usual they were asked to deposit all valuables and articles from their person. (fyi, For all the folks going rafting, you are not allowed to take anything on board the raft, even jewelery has to be removed).

After this is done, Anil remarks, hmmm, there Anish collected half the amount from us, here you collected the other half, plus the rafting tariff.. now you have taken all the valuables and every penny we had and our cell phones...Now all that has to happen is you disappearing from here and Anish shutting the site and disappearing from there and we are scammed thoroughly :) :) :)

Well, you can't title for being prudent on online financial transactions and he may have his reasons... but he definitely deserves the title for doing a Jerry Fletcher :-) (Jerry Fletcher is the name of Mel Gibson's character in the movie Conspiracy Theory, the paranoid cab driver who sees conspiracies everywhere and finally finds one which is true)

Anil, you have laid out a very tempting business model there..... but I think we will stick to running our homestay :-) and I hope after the visit we have put all your doubts to rest..

On a more serious note, What Anil raised is a concern for us, a lot of our guests are corporate, they need to submit proper bills to their companies. This is something homestays cannot do because legally homestays are not resorts or hotels - they are not corporate entities, we cannot have current accounts or give bills etc.

This is an action point for us, we will need to come up with a front - a travel firm that can give out bills and have current accounts etc. ..something to add to our todo list..Lets see what we can do..

The Bachelor's party....

The second team on the August 2nd weekend was Dheeraj, Anil, Shivraj and Vijendra

Turns out that this is to be Dheeraj's last outing as a bachelor .. he is getting married the next week

So before we proceed any further, On behalf of Arun, Rakesh and the entire team at Bethel, Let me Wish you a happy and prosperous married life.

The run up to the the day was quite eventful and is the subject of a another post ..

Anyway, Dheeraj had comfirmed to come on the weekend and Dheeraj and the folks left Bangalore on Saturday morning, Dheeraj seemed to be familiar with Coorg and he had said he will be coming to Kutta. Arun received them there and since they wanted to do rafting immediately, they went to the Rafting site directly. We were not able to accommodate them in the batches that were going that day (we had booked them for the next day)

The made their way back to the homestay and proceeded for lunch and then to the trek.

The next day they went for Rafting, they had one of the best Rafting experiences ever, the waters were high and they even managed to flip the raft. Ashok who was their guide lost the paddle and had to go on a futile search for it.

Dheeraj ,Anil, Shivraj and Vijendra thanks for coming, I hope Bethel was the kind of place you were looking for.

Their photo album can be found here

Here they are at the rafting spot..Left to right: Vijendra, Dheeraj, Anil, Rakesh(host) and Shivraj


The flipped raft at the rapids

Geek stuff: Google sites

Anyone try Google sites ( http://sites.google.com )? It is a pretty nifty tool to get online, I was able to make the complete replica of our site in about 15 minutes.

It is easy to use , gives some nice templates, I just chose one. For the next sites I am going to build.. this is where I will come to prototype...

Check us out on Google sites

Pop quiz..

Does a shareholder proxy battle between the Yahoo board and billionaire investor Icahn impact a nondescript homestay in Coorg ??

Oh yea it does, If you were very observant you would have seen that all images and even the slide show that you see on this blog are from Flickr..a darn good site for photos (I would strongly recommend the site, it is a true Web 2.0 site for photos, the API's it exposes and features they provide are far far better than the other sites).

Flickr it is owned by Yahoo, all it takes is some guy deciding to do make a change or a cost cutting resulting in reduction in the services levels and .. my website (http://www.bethelestate.com) is impacted !!

I'm already considering alternatives..any suggestions ..?

Relative quiet .....

This week we had two teams, Manjunath/Pattabhi and their team (total 8 in number -- Manju, Pattabhi, Vishwanath, Shailesh, Ravi, Vinay, Sunil and Avdooth) and Dheeraj, Anil, Vijendra, Shivraj (team of 4)

We were supposed to have Barath and his team of four, but they canceled at the very last minute and went towards Madikeri. Barath was very apologetic for the last minute change of plans -- My take..Well it happens!! I just hope the next time they come to Bethel

We also had Krishna and his team of ten who had come down for rafting. We also had Vijay and his wife who joined for rafting during the weekend

Did I say 8...

Well did I say Vineeth will have company of 8 people...you forgot the surprise element, the plan was that we would have a group of 8 guests.. instead we had 14 guests turning up..

This was one relaxed group..they had come with a clear purpose.. relax and enjoy. The spent the entire time joking and pulling each others legs and relaxing..they were also a foodie group.. they thoroughly enjoyed our cooking and made the most of it too..

The rains that Coorg is so famous for, have finally arrived, last week Kutta was in the news for the inches and inches of rain it received, Bethel which is up in the hills got even more, you can now see springs coming from the ground right in the estate

Barapole river is now nearing the danger mark, rafting will be one thrilling affair, anyone reading this..head to Coorg and raft NOW. It is going to be an experience you will never forget.