Chikmagalur

Chikmagalur. A small town in Karnataka is one place I will never return to. Unless of course I have to. Get this. It's known for coffee plantations but the coffee here sucks. It doesn't smell like coffee. It doesn't taste like coffee... Bah.. you'd think that they'd probably take the effort to roast the beans before serving it to you right? WRONG... They'd roast the beans and pack it off to bigger towns. 

Step into any Barista in Bangalore, and spend 55 bucks for a coffee. You'll love it. You'd be crazy to drive 5 hours to chikmagalur. The place is no great shakes either. You pack a DSLR, a tripod, 3 lenses, a couple of filters, a memory card and a fully charged battery. Only there's absolutely nothing worth shooting. You spend 2 days scouting for a good enough location only to realise once you get there, its completely covered by fog.

Warning: Im not saying that Chikmagalur is a bad place to shoot. It may be a great place to shoot when the weather is good. I was once told by an amateur photographer that a 30 minute drive to Bababudangiri hills will give you great sunset/sunrise shots. I went to Chikmagalur to catch this. But i soon decided that coming back to get this shot is probably not worth the effort.

Finally we leave and half way back to bangalore I decide to pull out my SLR for the first time. I caught a glimpse of a nice sun burst in my rear view mirror. And the picture below goes down in my "Go on a trip and end up shooting nothing" scrapbook.