I had decided to take Friday off, first I thought of leaving early, but then I decided to just take the whole day off. Boy am I glad. We left at around 10am. We had planned to leave at 9, but I wanted to call Lorelei for her birthday first, and then get a quick haircut, for which I was several weeks overdue. To cut a long story short, the barber took forever, and we got out of the house at about 9:40, leaving the girls in the care of Lalitha and Manju. Yes we took a different driver to leave our well trusted one at home. It turns out the driver is the same guy who drove Giselle and me around Pondicherry--imagine that.
We headed out through Bangalore traffic. It took us at least an hour to get out of Bangalore and onto the road to Mysore. But once we were there, we moved along quickly till the turn off shortly before Mysore, but after .... Then the road narrowed down and we had to slow down again for a while. For a short bit, it opened up again, but then we got to the 1 lane, pothole ridden, curvy road through the hillsides to the resort. All in all, including a short stop for a snack so we could skip lunch, it took about 4.5 hours. And then when we checked in they offered us lunch anyways as the restaurant was still open.
I didn't realize how much I needed this trip (ditto for Cindy). The quiet, the bird calls, the flowers,
the lack of horns, the walking through the plantation,
it's all just so relaxing. Friday afternoon, we enjoyed a walk through the plantation on the Joggers Trail. It took us about an hour through the coffee trees, pepper vines, and along some of the older narrow roads, leading to the home of the estate- Chickanhalli. We later met one of the grandsons of the founder of the estate through a mutual friend who happened to be here. We ran into him at lunch that day, and the next at breakfast. After the walk, we visited the coffee lounge, where they serve the local coffee, for free and you can sit and look out over the organic rice paddies in the small valley below,
and across to more coffee. We also found some coffee plants
on our walk which were already flowering. (They looked like it had snowed, and the snow was just sitting on the branches of the trees, kind of magical). Apparently now (end Feb through about 10 March) is when they come into full flower. I found out later that they bloom for 9 days. They smell much like Jasmine, but not quite as cloyingly sweet-very lovely, and so far no allergic reaction, thank goodness. Saturday morning I went for a bird walk, we saw at least 2 dozen different kinds of birds. Most memorable were the Coucal,
which is a large brown and black bird, the Kingfisher, and a Kite. We also saw many Bulbul, and Waggers, Mynahs, and other birds. Some were called locally Paddy Birds,
they looked a lot like egrets, but when I asked about a different bird, that was an egret, so this obviously wasnt. The bird walk started at 6:30-so Cindy didn't join me. I was the only one. Apparently on Sunday, there were a lot of people but no birds as it was foggy. Good luck for me I guess. I almost went again but decided to stay in bed for the early morning. All the mornings thereafter were foggy. Though it did burn off fairly quickly once the sun was up.Later in the day, we walked down to the Cauvery(or Kaveri) river-about 10 mins, and spent another 2 hours walking along it's banks through the village which ran along the banks.
Lots of kids wanted to try out their English on us, but it often ended with My name is, and I am n years old. Still fun to see them, and meet the people living there. I suspect not many of the visitors to the resort wander down that far. They did seem surprised to see us.
Cindy took a lot of pictures during our walk, unfortunately she may have lost them all as the CF card in the camer stopped working. She has to take it to a recovery center to see if they can still extract all the photo files.We relaxed in the afternoon, took a coffee-at least Cindy did, and sat and read in the coffee bar. Listening to the birds, and just breathing the fresh air is so rejuvinating. In the late afternoon, we met Ari's friend Gavin in the bar for a drink and he joined us for dinner.
Sunday we had a nice breakfast, and then on the way back to our room, we ran into the nephew of the brother who manages the resort for the family--Gavin's friend. We had a wonderful chat with him about everything from Indian life and culture to elephants charging in the wild. Then we took off for the Tibetan Monastary
which is close here. We went by the an elephant camp, but decided to skip that for another time when we bring the girls to visit here. We do want to come back. It is so refreshing--have I said that before? The monastary is one of the largest Tibetan settlements outside of Tibet. It is hard for me to describe. The temple inside was beautiful--See some of the pictures here. The grounds were very nice (and clean). The monks were all around, some of them obviously visiting with friends or family. Some were playing Cricket,
others were going about their business. It would have been nice to have someone or something explain the temple and some of the pictures and or artifacts to us, but as it was, it was sort of nice not to be harassed by anyone too. We must have spent about an hour wandering about the temples and the grounds(more pictures). Then we came back to the resort--even though it is only about 15 Kilometers as the crow flies, it is about a 1 hour trip by car--crossing the river 2x.I went on the guided plantation walk.
They told about growing the pepper. The plant will drop a vine, called the mother plant, which is cut off and propogated to grow more vines. The vine will apparently not grow from the peppers themselves. The pepper is an annual plant which comes ripe here in Feb. We did see it along the road being dried. The naturalist told that some unscrupulous people will mix in Lantana berries and dry them up to bulk up their crop. It is only picked when ripe-it turns red, and the red skin is dried to black in the sun.I learned a lot about the shade grown Coffee. There are two kinds grown here Arabica and Robusta. The Arabica plant will grow for about 60 years, the Robusta for 100. They are cut down to keep them from growing too tall,and then they produce more. One plant will yeild about 9 Kg of berries. A picker will pick about 300-350Kg of berries/day at 1RS per KG. The coffee takes 180 inches of water a year, and typical rain around here is about 130 inches. The rest is from sprinkling which happens in the dry part of the year after harvest. The harvest is in Dec/Jan. The sprinkling happens around now, and the flowers come out-they last for 9 days and drop off, then the berries start to form.
Other things which grow in the area are Rosewood, Avocados, and Jackfruit, which the elephants love. There are also some Orange trees left, but they are attacked by a disease and most of the Oranges are gone now.
Apparently the bamboo starts to dry out at this time, through May/June. There are 3 kinds of Bamboo, and some of it grows very tall(look back at the photo in the village, there you see the bamboo growing behind the houses). It is also used as a ladder--seen here.
A single stalk is cut and trimmed and the side branches are the steps up. Anyways the wild elephants eat a lot of the Bamboo, but when it dries out they want other things. Since they like the Jackfruit so much, they will go long ways to get it. There are electrified fences around the plantation to keep the elephants out. But, some of the elephants are so smart, they will put a log on top of the fence to push it down. The plantation also uses 8 foot deep trenches. The elephants will fill in a trench to get across. Now I saw them putting the electric fences at the edges of the trenches--maybe the combination will keep them out. We also heard that the plantation has stopped the jungle walks as, since the government is catching some elephants to domesticate or transfer, they are becoming afraid of people, and have been attacking or charging recently. I guess it is ok to skip that now. We have been invited to come to the other resort they own in Kabini where there are a lot of elephants to see in May. Monday we took a leisurely drive back home--well mostly leisurely. The driver seemed impatient to get home, except when he was taking calls from France booking vacation taxi rentals. All in all it was a very relaxing weekend and we hope to go back. It would be fun to go with some friends.
1 comment:
Sounds marvelous!
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