Sunset Bay, Mysore

5 reasons to go to Sunset Bay

Blue waters
“Take a turn and you shall see the waters – just follow the road till you….” Nikesh had told us. Interestingly the water comes to view without an announcement – not even a hush. Once you leave the Bangalore-Mysore highway, the landscape does get more and more rustic – haystacks, houses with tethered work-oxen and cows, village schools with huge play grounds – like the way schools are meant to be. But nothing really prepares you for kilometers of water in front of you. No sea-like waves, but a calm, serene sheet of water; what is a part of the Krishna Raja Sagar dam. On whose edges is where Nikesh hosts friends and friends of friends on his farm – plainly called the Sunset Bay.
One really doesn’t get to see where the waters end – but we are told that it is over 40 kms away. What was a collection of villages – that got completely covered with water, with the residents relocated elsewhere – before the Maharaja took the decision to build the dam.
A lone fisherman - the only speck in the horizon - on a coracle on an early morning & a bunch of migrant geese towards evening– that is all that would come between you and that line where the water meets the sky far away –if you sat under that big tree on the banks all day.
The banks aren’t sandy, but pebbly – with almost all of those pebbles getting submerged at least once a year when water comes up to the boundary of the farm on a good monsoon. One doesn’t miss the sand much; as the water has such a calming effect on you – as long as you get to see it.

Stars at night
Once the sun is down – you wouldn’t know about this huge expanse next door – unless some one told you. No waves, no splashes, no ships as red dots in the horizon or calls of men coming back home with the catch of the day. It is just still silence – as you sit outside the little dining hall – except for the crackling of the bon-fire. Out there, once sees a sky as you did many years ago – with a thousand times the stars one gets to see at the city. Orion or the Ursa Major had never faded away – it felt like spotting a couple of long lost friends from a junior school black and white photograph.
As the embers flickered further, you either tilt your chair and spirits in the direction of what would be a blue expanse next morning or strum a little melody or just look up and make that connection – till you walk up to your rooms.

Tree houses
One would walk up literally – if one chose to stay at the few private tree houses. The one at the edge of the farm opens out nicely into the waters. They aren’t the rope ladders that you pull up once you got to the door – but ones that anyone steady on their feet can climb up. One of the reasons we chose not to take them. Nandita was just getting on her feet the first time and the second time she had just discovered that she could run – and she always kept us on our toes. If you have kids under the age of 5, go for one of the 4 rooms on the ground.

Minimalism
There isn’t much to tell the 4 rooms from one another except for the replicas of Florentine paintings at its walls. When the outsides offered so much – it is best to keep the insides minimal. Exactly so, the walls themselves were interestingly ‘painted’ with tender jute cloth stretched into its place very well by little nails. The red-oxide floor felt nice and natural on your feet. The open wooden wardrobes and the skylights at the clean sparkling toilets were functional and just that.
The dining hall had a round table, a low table and some chairs. The shack with a view to the ‘bay’ just outside the dining hall – had a wooden table and sturdy benches on either side. The most ornate object in the entire acreage being an eight foot tall pendulum clock in one of the rooms – which I didn’t observe enough if it ticked or tocked. It was never there in the rooms Nikesh had hosted us in.

Host with a personality
Just to put some pictures against the word “host” here – we aren’t talking a pretty, articulate lady at the reception or a gloved bell boy to pick up your bags to your room. It is about a vintage red pick-up van, with a ‘Lawrence’ banner stuck at the rear window - that would meet you at an interim point and guide you to the location. It is about John Denver, Clapton or the Dire Straits in a Kenwood system – again in a minimal gray. It is about asking for a personal reference the first time you would call. It is about asking the kind of food one liked before you started from home.