During Christmas, this year, I decided to visit Belgaum to reliven my memories of college and also take a brief vacation with my wife and daughter. Belgaum is a beautiful town in the North of Karnataka in India, located close to the Karnataka-Goa border.

While there, my friend, Ratan, had planned an overnight trip to what he called as “the unexplored heaven”.

Shangri-la, located near Anmod, turned out to be ~65 KM or 2 hours drive from Belgaum through a rough terrain. Situated clandestinely within the dense forests of North Karnataka, Shangri-la turned out to be a very pleasant surprise, making complete sense of what Ratan dubbed it.

I probably cannot do enough justice to the place through words, so I’ll attempt to depict it by means of specifying a few characteristics and images and leave the rest to your imagination.

• It took us 2 hours to cover ~65 KM (or 40 miles) through dense forests, broken roads, mud roads, no-roads
• Natural partition by means of a river and a stream on two sides and wooden planks guarding the other two sides.
• Despite being in the dense forest, amazingly, we were not infested by insects and had very neat and clean cottages.
• No mobile phone coverage (except Reliance)
• No A/C in Room (temperature is very good throughout the year)
• No TV in Room (one TV with Tata Sky satellite connection in the dining area)
• Open-air Tandoor and a great chef
• Camp-fire (if it doesn’t rain)
• Elephant ride and Elephant bathe(!)
• Attached, clean, western-style toilet and shower in the cottage with 24-hours water (you need to request the resort people to heat the water if you prefer a hot bath).
• … more through images below

Other images here!