Kids Day Out at the Campsite. Life Skills and Fun!

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We’ve partnered with the awesome folks at Urban Climbers to create a day trip at the Nachikuppam Campsite where it’s not only a great picnic, but an introduction to multiple life skills, team work and a huge booster dose of independence and confidence.

What : A day out for the kids for getting them that little bit readier for life. Yes, including handling a knife as a tool!

Where : Happening at our Nachikupppam. Campsite, 75 km from Bangalore.

When : On 20th Feb 2016

For Who : Kids only, 8yrs and above.

We’ll pick them up near Total Mall Sarjapura Road around 6am and drop them there starting back at 5pm.

Run by the awesome folks at Urban Climbers

Price : 2500/- all inclusive

The Plan For The Day
6am: Start form Bangalore

8am: Breakfast at Camp Linger, Alhonso By The Lake, Nachikuppam

9 am: Introduction (instructors, campsite, LNT)

Activity-1: Trek, Rock Climbing & Rappelling

Activity-2: Signalling and Orienteering

12:30 pm: Lunch and break

Activity-3:

Intro of safety and equipment’s
Knotting
Prussiking
Tent Pitching

3:30 pm: snacks

Activity-4:

Team Building Activities
Reflection

5pm: Head back to Bangalore

Urban Climbers have been running walls, and run events for both adults and kids. Their trainers are certified and very capable, and we’ll take good care of your kids.

Do write in or leave a comment if interested and share with friends too. Thanks!

stay@linger.in

 

Visiting Karnataka : Coffee, Beaches and Hampi

Whoever coined “One State, Many Worlds” for Karnataka Tourism got it spot on! The diversity of geography, languages, food, climatic conditions, and the history, wildlife, culture across the state is unbelievable!

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Someone asked us to stitch up a road trip across the state inside of a week to cut across and sample various places, so we thought we’d share it for everyone’s benefit. The idea is to keep the drives to 4-6 hours, and cover a decent variety. The whole state is still too vast for seeing inside a week, and we usually recommend more time at each place. Hampi, for instance, alone needs about 3 days!

Bangalore – Sakleshpur/Chikmagalur via Shravana Belagola and the exquisite Belur Temple.

About 300 km : 4.5 hours + breaks

The drive itself is fantastic, and gets into a scenic countryside pretty much as soon as you get out of Bangalore on to the Mangalore highway. There’s a bunch of options along the highway for a quick snack.

Sravanabelagola – about 150 kms out – is one the most important pilgrimage centres for Jainism, and goes back to the 3rd century BC! It’s totally worth a stopover.

The Belur Temple at Belur, 35km past Hassan, is one of the best crafted and preserved temples in South India. Do use the services of a guide while there – they tell the story really well.

And then you’re amidst the coffee estates. Rolling hills, low clouds for a major part of the year, rivers and streams born in the Western Ghats, and a cover of green as far as you can see. We’ll be happy to host you at the Balur Estate or at Golden Wood, Sakleshpur.

Spend a day or two here soaking it in, going on long walks/treks in the estate, understanding growing, picking and producing coffee and its different grades and forms. A planter’s life is a blissful one, if tough.

Malnad – Tirthhalli – Shimoga – The Sharavathi Valley – Honnavara – Gokarna.

About 310km – 6 hours + breaks.

The Malnad – male’ nadu or the land of hills – is one of the prettiest terrains we’ve ever driven through. The roads are not always great, but the treat of the eyes, the clean air and the lack of traffic make up for it. Tirthalli is one of the wettest districts in the South!

You could stop over at the Jog Falls which plunge 830ft. This is especially gorgeous just after the monsoon, and a sight to behold.

At Honnavara you get to the coastline after a lovely drive through the Western Ghats – the lush green Sharavathi Valley which drops to the coast in a matter of a few kilometres. The roads from here are good, and you keep catching glimpses of the Arabian Sea. Turn in to Gokarna (stay with us!) for quiet, long beaches, pretty estuaries with sandbanks, hills and forests, right upto the sea, mangroves and numerous fishing villages. The temple town is ancient and psychedelic, and the area – unlike Goa – retains the feel of the ages old world that it is – great for exploring on foot.

Gokarna – Hubli – Gadag – Hampi

Another 320km – 6-7 hours. No real stops on this.

The drive starts out along the coast, winds back up the Western Ghats and then gets deeper into the Deccan Plateau. Gadag has an ancient Jain Temple worth a quick stopover at.

But it’s Hampi you want to get to! A whole city built of stone and abandoned completely a few hundred years ago.

 

The drive back to Bangalore should take you about 7 hours, and is mostly zippy highway. Except a quick stopover at a dhaba, not much there, unless you want to stop and ogle at the magnificent Chitradurga Fort. It’s amazing how much history dots the landscape everywhere!

A Do Nothing Vacation is Just What The Doctor Ordered

Stress is the number one cause of many a thing that’s wrong with our lives today. Our attention spans are low. The mind doesn’t flow freely and as rarely stretches as beautifully, as wide as it can given an unfettered run. Devices and interrupts rule our lives. We sit too long. We get no sun. We don’t play in the mud, or in water. We just do not have unstructured, outdoors time.

It’s just plain terrible – for your health, for your creativity, for deep thought and for your relationships.

Recommended : A dose of do nothing!

Even a quick trip to a quiet place where the cellular networks practically don’t work, but you get the time to reconnect with everything else helps you slow down, think better, breather deep and feel a little fitter.

We recommend a 4-5 day days off at a place like this. Up in the Himalayas, or deep in the coffee hills, or just doing long, leisurely walks on the beach. We’ll even help with a session or two with a masseur (in Kerala/Gokarna), a trek or two, and lots of time around the bonfire.

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Try it – and see how much of a difference it makes to how you feel. How fresh your thoughts are after such a trip. Long, do nothing vacations are very, very therapeutic.

We’re sure your doctor will agree as well!

 

Our Valuation. And We Love It.

The startup world is going crazy. Even in the travel space. Mad growth – often with poor service and no soul, crazy valuations, and increasingly unsustainable models, pricing and discounts to drive numbers that justify this frenzy for a little longer.

Can’t deny the pressure doesn’t get to us, despite all the things we hold dear and believe in. But nope, we’re not changing all that.

So we decided to recount our blessings. And realized our valuation comes from all the trust, love shared and the true value that people see in us. Here’s a short list of some of the stuff that’s happened in the past that gives us courage to hold on to our beliefs in this sea of insanity:

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One of our regulars helped setup rooms and moved furniture with us!

Someone came back to the same place and got gifts for all the staff there.

Another made a lovely painting.

A guest made and sent us a custom-made calendar as a thank you note after the trip. That was super sweet!

A regular and now our art mentor came and painted a wall at Coorg. Plus lots of gifts.

We regularly get loads of books from folks who’ve been to our places – “for your libraries”.

We get lots and lots and lots of used wine bottles in support of our stand of not using plastic bottles for water.

A regular made a poster for us.

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(The awesome capture of what Gokarna is, thanks to Maitri)

Another sends us beautiful poetry regularly.

Folks keep sharing instances of “do nothing” now getting used regularly by others, with a sense of pride about Linger!

We get ideas, connects, advice from all of our guests on a regular basis.

Our guests have been our strongest brand ambassadors, and keep telling other like minded folks they should try out a Linger vacation.

Many, many have become friends now 🙂

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We feel blessed, and highly valued by those that really matter. And that is the single most important thing that keeps us going, sticking to the path we’ve picked.

Thanks, all of you. You know who you are.

 

So what is “Do Nothing”, really?

A lot of folks do a lot of stuff when they visit a Linger location. Hikes, treks, long walks, go see coir-making, spend time on the beach and in the river, even learn surfing. Some chop firewood, others go riding, ad a few have even helped out with farm activities.

So why do we go on about “do nothing”?

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Vacations, not to-do lists.

We realized a long time ago that folks were planning too much – places to see, itineraries, things to do and other details and expectations – into a vacation, and basically getting stressed!

We certainly want you to explore the place, understand and experience the livelihoods, go birding, get a sense of the forest close up, visit old temples and pick up some local history, take in the pretty sights and try the amazing food, and breathe some clean, fresh air while you get some exercise. What we do not want you to do is become slave to a list of things you come prepared with, and must then check off.

Just go with the flow, and you’ll discover so much you can keep doing around these places! At your own pace, when, and to the extent you feel like.

Disconnect, Reconnect.

Another part of “doing nothing” on a vacation is to stay away from an interrupt driven life, that both sucks up time and attention, and prevents you from lingering – over a long conversation, at a roadside spot where the views are stunning, or doing a long walk or spending uninterrupted with those you care about most.

So we strongly suggest you switch those devices off, or at least keep them in a corner someplace.

Slow down. Drop anxiety.

Most of us have learned to “spend time usefully” and while this is great for productivity, unstructured, unplanned time is a healer, and makes for wonderful vacations. So take it one step at a time – the afternoon can be planned once lunch is over 🙂

It does take a half day to slow your mind and thoughts down, but once you do, it’s very rewarding, and you truly have a do-nothing time, even it’s full of treks, barbecues, visits to places around and long mornings watching the birds.