Borrowed Murakami in the backpack — Kafka on the Shore, but we aren’t headed to the beaches. For our first overnight holiday in a year, the red pin is on K. Gudi, a wilderness camp about 100 kilometres south of Mysuru. In the steadily escalating heat of late February, you pick the greens before you think of the blues. What you also don’t pick is a 500-page novel, famous for being unputdownable, to start, two days before you leave. But a novel chooses when to be read, and if there is one that can be convincing of wielding this power, Murakami has to be its creator. So, us off on the road, book of the backpack, windy roads slowly merge into windy sentences merge into windy roads into the deep, deciduous greens of the Biligiri Ranagana Betta.

With wildly popular safari camps — Bandipur, Nagarhole and Kabini — attracting all the traction of wildlife enthusiasts, K. Gudi is a gem hidden from popularity and hence footfalls that equal the other big three. B.R. Hills, twenty kilometres away from K. Gudi, though is a name that frequents tongues, does so in the same breath as the Ranganatha Swamy temple that sits atop a hill and is seen more as a pilgrimage site than anything else. Situated at an arm’s reach from Mysuru, B.R. Hills and K. Gudi are popular destinations for day trips, but wanting to stretch our stay over a long weekend, we looked for accommodations. Though Googling will show you a considerable number of homestays and lodges that are available, including a Jungle Lodges and Resorts Camp at K. Gudi, one resort drew our eye — Gorukana Eco Wellness Retreat. With charming two-story cottages and greenery that promises to tenderly envelop you, Gorukana is a resort blending sustainable luxury with community development, directing all its revenue towards empowering the Soliga Tribal Community, the primary inhabitants of B.R. hills. In a step towards encouraging skilled labour and livelihood, the resort is run and maintained by Soliga natives trained in hospitality.

Reaching there two and half hours, and about thirty pages, later, you step right into a very green dream. Dreamy enough to step out of the absurd book and not see the difference until your eyes adjust to the surroundings. Murakamian nightmares might be made of awe-ful flutes filled with cat souls but here, in the very real world in front of you, it was made of equally awe-ful spiders and the massive webs they weaved, delicately glistening in the sunlight, hanging unconcerned at the side of the pathway, the corner of your eye. Just as you are about to pack the book back in the bag, a cat — the ultimate Murakami motif— crosses you and for one split second, you cannot help but wish you were Nakata possessing an ability to speak to these mysterious creatures. Did your eyes really adjust to the surroundings?

Lunch, evening tea and a satisfying amount of lazing around on crisp, white hotel sheets later, sunset and a convincing amount of devotion are on the agenda for the evening. Making our way to the Biligiri Ranganatha Swamy temple, just a few minutes of car ride away from the resort, we fell right into the arms of breath-taking views of the surrounding hills, and the company of a hoard of monkeys. Copious amounts of bananas later, the sun begins to set, flushing various amounts of orange into the deep greens of the hill cover; the round, red sun on the cover of Kafka on the Shore hangs muted in its black night. That night, tucked tight, fearing loose spiders and shapes creeping up on you while deep in slumber, Kafka and his ghost of Miss Saeki join you in your unsuspecting dream. 

The wake-up call goes off at 6.30 am the following morning. There is a nature trail on offer and while wandering off on your own and getting lost in the forest is not the most responsible thing to do, despite Kafka making it look worthwhile in the book, you can still walk the guided path and let your mind weave in and out of fiction — the early morning sunlight peeking through the trees, cool hill-top breeze and unsynchronised chirping of birds help. That afternoon, you seemingly get lost in the forests again. This time, tracing one path after another in a jeep at the K. Gudi safari. Big cats are a rarity, but boars and birds cross our paths in abundance, and there isn’t any shortage of deer in the vicinity. Though not one eventful enough for the books, the safari nevertheless took us to the heart of the forest — no random soldiers and entrances, I’d left the book back at the hotel — and let us sit in its midst listening, peering, breathing, taking it all in.

Another nightfall in the middle of the forest, dark seems to wrap around us faster here. We arrive back at the resort to resonating drum sounds and smoke from a bonfire. An evening of immersive Soliga tradition awaits. Through stories and songs and traditional dances, we learn their simple lives and ways as honey-gatherers, their traditions, and seasonal celebrations — untouched by commodification and other ghosts that haunt the urbanised population. Even COVID, thankfully, hadn’t found its way there. After a straightforward meal — a combination of popular and local cuisines — I drift away into a dreamless second night.

The morning of departure, gathering bags and photos and memories, and some locally sourced honey and sherbets, and me my Murakami, we bid goodbye to our two-day home cocooned in slanting sunlight and quietude. A welcoming respite from the mundane every day, Gorukana, celebrating sustainability and local culture, checks all the boxes of a holiday done right. And if you like me, carry surrealism in your vacation read’s pages, then literary forests overlap with physical ones and you walk deeper and deeper and deeper until the storm that’s supposedly following you, but is actually inside you, is lost and left behind in the trails.