From Coffee beans and wildlife to the times gone by...

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Has anyone ever asked you what do you want to be when you grow up? Don't say no, because that would be a lie. Well, even I have been answering that question since I was 3, no 4.

First I wanted to be a scientist, and then just marry Amitabh Bachchan. My mom talked me out of it and promised that she would fix me up with his son. That died too. Never mind. But, when I was 16, I developed another passion... Travelling.

That was when I decided that I would live to travel. The perfect job would be that pays me to travel!

Then, I grew up (according to people)... and did not become a scientist, didn't marry Junior B, not an advertiser but became a journalist. Something I had never imagined, planned or dreamt of.

Everything else died, but the desire to travel lived through these years. And as one of the famous saying from a famous movie goes, " hum jo sahi mein chahate hain, hume end mein wohi milta hai..." I got my first chance to do a travel show, a dream come true for me.

The first task was to find a destination and I could only see the world map. Pin-pointing a place was the toughest thing. I wanted to go to Nagaland, Lahaul, Micronesia, Albania, Hawaii... the list would just not get over.

Then I met my friend Nimish, who started narrating tales about his land. A land where coffee was a berry and not a bean, a land where deer and monkeys shared their meal, a land where monks chanted aloud and a land where chirping birds made all the sound.

This was it!

My first travel show would be on Coorg.

It is a southern district of Karnataka and a paradise for a coffee lover. The people here look nothing like the Dravidian race. Well, they are the descendants of the Greek soldiers who stayed back from Alexander's army and later mixed with the women of the local tribes. They are a martial race and have given some of the best Generals to the Indian Army. One of the example of that stands tall on a busy junction of Madikeri, the statue of Field Martial Cariappa. Madikeri is the capital city of Coorg and a brilliant place to get introduced to the Coorgi culture.

Just about 36 kilometres from there is Khushalnagar that has the second largest Tibetan settlement in the country after Dharamshala.

Monks, Tibetan settlement here in Karnataka?

Well, even I didn't expect that.

But it was definitely worth a visit. I caught hold of a monk called Ogeyn who told me all about Buddhism that I always wanted to know.

Did you know that if one decides to become a monk at a later age, then he would have to lock himself up in a room for 3 years and 3 months and dedicate the time to studies and meditation to finally achieve the title of a monk. Weird? Not for them.

But what was most fascinating was the Golden Temple, a spectacular prayer hall built by the monks themselves. What might appear like a piece of art is actually calculated and created by the book. Everything at the hall meant something in the Buddhist philosophy.

After Coorg, my journey took me to the Nagarhole National Park at Kabini, my first trip into a real jungle. It is a vast forest with almost 224 tigers! But it is not the tiger that you need to worry about there; it is the elephants.

But not all elephants are aggressive. I made friends with an elephant called Meenakshi. I even helped her take a bath and she returned the favour. She gave me a shower in the open river Kabini. This is when I thanked God. Only if elephants knew their size, I'd be crushed by now. It was a little scary, but fun.

I met a couple from Switzerland who were here to experience the wilderness they had never imagined.

The best interaction was with the tribals who lived inside the forest before it was declared as a national park. Times have changed and so has their present dwelling, but animals are still sacred to them. I couldn't help thinking what would it be like to live in the wild and be friends with what we fear the most.

Another thing that I had to witness when in Karnataka were the temples. With almost 92 ruins of Hoysala dynasty in Karnataka, a temple has survived the test of time and stands unharmed to tell us the tale.

The Vishnu temple in Belur was built in 1117 A.D and was named Chennakeshava. Chenna means beautiful in the local language and keshava is Vishnu. The deity is actually pretty and hence the name Chennakeshava. Yes, it is in a female form of Mohini.

There are about 10,000 sculptures all over the temple but it is famous for the bracket figures of madanikas or Apsaras.

They say that the queen Shantala Devi herself posed as a model for these sculptures and she often performed in this temple. Her beauty might still catch your eye and you surely can relive those moments here.

That got me to the final destination of my journey, Halebid. The name of the city narrates its own story. Halebid means an old or a ruined town. It was the regal capital of the Hoysala Empire till the Sultans destroyed it in the 14th century. What remains of the city is a wonder in itself.

Never thought I'd come face to face with history this way.

It took about 190 years to build this temple and it is still incomplete.

From erotic postures to sequences of Mahabharata, it is evident how temples were not just a place to worship, but also a mirror to the society and culture of those times. You're bound to feel minuscule in front of the majestic creation, but it only makes you proud of our glorious past.

From coffee beans and wildlife to the times gone by, it was quite a journey for me. If you too have had such fantastic travel experiences, I would love to know more. So do write in.