February 18 dawned clear and cool in Mangalore, quite a contrast from the previous day's rain and clouds. After more than three weeks on India's Arabian Sea coast, I headed inland, taking a 10 o'clock bus east just north of the Netravati River, then crossing it after about 15 miles and heading southeast for about 80 miles to Madikeri. I was heading to the hilly region formerly known as Coorg, but now as Kodagu, though most people still seem to call it Coorg.. The bus first passed through very scenic green, rolling hills, with coconut palms and many other trees, including groves of very tall areca palms, many of these thin trees 40 or 50 feet high, with groves of the much shorter banana trees underneath. There were no mosques or women in black, but there were a few churches. About 12:30 we arrived at the small town of Sullia, at only about 400-500 feet elevation, for a half hour lunch stop. The next 30 miles were particularly beautiful as we ascended into the Western Ghats and the Coorg region. We passed through dense jungle, with many great views. We also passed more areca palm groves, with the palms in rows and columns maybe six or eight feet apart. Bananas grew underneath, and higher up, coffee grew underneath. Even higher up there was more coffee growing under jungle trees, and the coffee bushes were flowering, the white flowers emitting a powerful sweet smell that you could smell even from the bus.
A little after 2 we arrived in Madikeri, the main city of Coorg, at an elevation of about 3500-4000 feet and with about 30,000 people. It is a hilly, pleasant town, with a small fort on a hill, and I walked around after getting a hotel. The native people of Coorg, or Kodagu, are called Kodavas and are light skinned and thought to be perhaps of Kurdish or Persian ancestry, perhaps arriving in India's northwest when the Persian Empire conquered the region in the 6th century B.C. and subsequently making their way to south India. Some speculate they may be descended from Alexander the Great's Greek troops. They have a strong military tradition, having maintained their independence for centuries, including fighting off Tipu Sultan from Mysore in the late 1700's. In 1834 the British established a protectorate following an appeal by nobles against a despotic ruler who was killing off his relatives, and others, apparently as a job protection program. It failed, as the British deposed him. The Kodavas make up only about one-sixth of the population now, with many immigrants from Kerala and other parts of south India.
I walked to the fort on a hill in the center of town. Inside the former palace of the raja now houses district government offices. There is also a church inside the fort, now a museum. I walked around inside the fort and atop the walls and then walked to Raja's Seat on the west side of town, passing a couple of statues of military men, including one who was India's army chief of staff in the 1960's. Raja's Seat is a little park looking out over the hills to the west. I watched the sun set through the clouds about 6:30. My cold water bucket bath was a little chilly that night.
The next morning I walked through town and then north for about three or four miles, along narrow roads, to Abbi Falls. There were ups and downs, but the sky was cloudy for most of the morning and it wasn't too hot. Coffee was blooming all along the route, emitting a wonderful odor. Many other flowers, including poinsettias and bougainvillea, lined the route. It took me about two hours, with a steep descent at the end, to reach the end of the road and the path through more blooming coffee bushes down to the base of the falls. They fall about 70 feet, but in steps with the last drop perhaps 40 feet. I spent about three hours in that beautiful area, at the falls and wandering along the trail through the coffee. I sat for a while and ate raisins and cashews I had brought from Madikeri. Quite a few Indian tourists came through. At one point a great cacophony of cicadas sprung up, for no apparent reason, and then subsided after maybe fifteen minutes.
Sometime after 2 I began the walk back to town. The sun was out and it was hotter than in the morning, but I enjoyed the views and the smell of the coffee blossoms. An elderly Kodava man along the way explained the names of some of the flowers. Coffee berries were drying on a tarp in front of one house, and an elderly woman was shifting them around with her feet, so that they would dry evenly, I guess. By about 5 I was back at the northern outskirts of town, where the tombs of the rajas are located. Rain appeared to be imminent, but the black clouds passed without rain as I explored the tombs, dating from about 1800 and in Indo-Saracen style. I got back to my hotel about 6.
The sky was clear the next morning and about 10:30 I left on a bus that traveled southwest for about 25 miles, through more coffee plantations and a few small towns and crossing over the Kaveri River, one of India's seven holy rivers, whose headwaters are in Coorg, to Kabbinakad, nothing more than a junction with a few shops. Kabbinakad is perhaps 800 feet lower in elevation than Madikeri, but from the junction a jeep took me up a steep road for about two miles to Honey Valley Estate, a coffee, pepper and cardamom plantation with rooms for tourists. It is located up a beautiful valley, with coffee growing under huge jungle trees. I checked into one of their cheap (only 450 rupees, about $8, a night) but comfortable budget rooms and then had a delicious all-you-can-eat buffet vegetarian lunch for 150 rupees with a couple from Hyderabad, an architect and his wife, who had arrived that morning.
The plantation is at about 4000 feet elevation and was started as an apiary, a bee farm, in 1984. By 1991 it was India's largest producer of honey, 6000 kilos, or 13,200 pounds, a year. In 1994 a disease from Thailand that arrived overland through Burma killed off the bees and they switched to coffee and tourism. The Kodava couple, Suresh and Susheela Chengappa, who own the place, originally lived in a mud house with no electricity and no access road, just a trail.
The valley has has grass topped hills on either side, with jungle on the slopes, and about 3 I walked up to the pass only about 300 feet higher in elevation than the buildings and then up Manjamotte, the hill to the east of the valley. I got back about 6 and was delighted to find that there was hot water for a bucket bath in the communal bath house for the cheapest rooms. I had another great meal for dinner. Breakfasts are 100 rupees, lunch and dinner 150, and if you want an egg it is 15 per egg. So it was costing me only about $15 a day to stay at that beautiful place.
After a great night's sleep in the cool air, I got up before sunrise and walked for almost two hours before breakfast. Birdsong filled the cool morning air as I walked among blooming coffee bushes, flowers and tall jungle trees. I spent a quite a while at breakfast talking to the other guests, both Indian and foreign, before setting off a little before 11 to climb up the steep path to the ridge to the west of the valley. It is more than a thousand foot climb in elevation to the top, where there are great views in all directions, including of the jungle filled valley below. I could make out the red tile roof of one of the plantation buildings through the trees. Clouds obscured Tadiyandamol, Coorg's highest peak at about 5800 feet, to the southwest. I walked along the ridge, with some sun and some clouds, and made it back down in time for lunch, after about three hours' hiking altogether.
After another great lunch and reading the newspaper, I left a little after 3 on another hike, this one up to the pass above the valley and then along the side of a hill to a river that comes down a waterfall. It started raining about half an hour after I left and rained for about 20 minutes, hard at times. I pulled out my umbrella and continued along the path as the rain stopped. Eventually I had a view of the thin waterfall ahead. At the end of the trail, passing through a last section of very thick, beautiful jungle, I reached the rocky river bed, with thick trees and creepers all around. A large, colorful wood fungus was attached to the rocks next to the river. It started to rain again so I started back and the rain soon ceased. But it started up again and rained quite hard the last half hour of the hike. I got back a little after 6 and was particularly glad to be able to take a hot water bucket bath. The sky was clear at night, with many stars and two planets visible through the trees.
The sky was cloudless the next morning and before breakfast I took an almost two hour walk back and forth on a mostly level path along the east side of the valley through jungle and coffee bushes. As always, the morning air was filled with chirping birds. About 10, after breakfast, I set off on a hike down the valley, on the road down passing coffee bushes and two elderly men using a huge, two man saw to cut a log into lumber. I turned off on a road being paved, with men and women working with baskets of gravel and barrels of tar. I took a few photos and they all posed. A bit further on I met and talked to a young Kodava man who showed me pepper and cardamom growing among his coffee bushes. He told me Kodavas need no licence for firearms (an exemption, I later read, dating from the 1860's) and that his family has an old matchlock gun.
Leaving the road and following a path that crossed a stream, I eventually reached my goal, the Nalakunad Palace, about 700 feet lower than the plantation buildings. I arrived just as the 25 or so students at the little school next to it were saying their prayers before lunch. They were all sitting lined up, with hands folded in prayer, under the veranda of the school building. Their plates were full of rice as the teacher ladled a vegetable dish on the rice. They ended their prayers with "Shanti, shanti, shanti" and then commenced to eat. The teacher told me they are form 1 to 5, so about 5 to 10 years old. After lunch some of the boys played soccer barefoot in the grassy and dusty little field next to the school. They were very good.
I had brought a pack lunch prepared by the plantation kitchen and ate it on the veranda of the palace, really more of a hunting lodge, built in 1792. It was here in 1834 that the Raja fled before he was captured and deposed. The pack lunch consisted of about half a loaf of that awful Indian white bread, a boiled egg, a piece of cheese, a tomato, a cucumber, jam and a pack of oreos! As I was finishing the security guard showed up, probably after his own lunch, and showed me around inside. There are some interesting wall and ceiling paintings. After the palace, I walked to some nearby coffee plantations that also take in tourists and sometime after 3 began my walk back, stopping to sit on the rocks next to the river. In a pool of water along the river several large insects (an inch or more long) were on the surface, seeming anchored by their front two and back two legs, while the middle two moved back and forth like oars, quite vigorously at times. On the way back I passed the road workers again and made the steep ascent to the plantation buildings, arriving sometime after 5. I had a good view of the ridge I had climbed the day before. I sat and talked with some foreign yoga and meditation students up for a day from Mysore before taking a bath. The moon rose over the hill to the east before dark.
The next morning I took the walk along the east side of the valley again before breakfast. About 9:30 I set off with two other in hopes of reaching the top of Tadiyandamol. The plantation gives you a hiking guide book, but it is dated and unclear at times. We reached the ridge near the top of the waterfall, with great views of the jungle below and the next ridge, with views all the way to Kerala to the south and west. Tadiyandamol was visible, but we had trouble finding the proper route. Eventually, we found it and continued along the ridge, with great views, but lots of burrs clinging to my legs and feet. Eventually, I put on my trouser extensions to protect my legs. I should have worn shoes instead of sandals. We stopped for lunch in a shady spot along the ridge and continued walking until about 2, when we decided that it would take too long to reach the top and get back before dark. We made our way back, finding an easier route where we had had trouble before. Two of us sat for about an hour on the top of the ridge before making our way back down about 6.
The next morning I again took a walk, for about an hour and half, along the eastern side of the valley before breakfast. I relaxed for most of the rest of the day, reading the newspaper, a book about the origins of the Coorgs, and several National Geographics. A bull had been badly injured the day before, probably by a tiger, though perhaps by a leopard. He had large scratches on his back and a big chunk of flesh taken out of his left foreleg, near the shoulder. He apparently had been grazing on the grassy slopes of the ridge above the plantation. The plantation has about 15 cattle and they are taken every morning from their sheds up to the ridge to graze. About 4:30 I did take a walk, along the route to the river below the waterfall that I had taken two days before. The sky was clouding up, but there were great views over the jungle. Birds and cicadas were making lots of noise as I made it back just before 7 and just before darkness set in. An almost full moon rose over the hill to the east.
I took another early morning walk the next day, this time going down the road, passing fragrant coffee blossoms, flowers and huge jungle trees. As always, the air was full of birdsong. About 10:30 I set off with a pack lunch and made my way to the area near the top of the waterfall, the way we had come on our way to Tadiyandamol. There is beautiful thick jungle just before you come to the stream that pours over the falls. I sat on rocks near the stream and had my lunch. I had asked for an omelet for breakfast that morning at the same time I ordered my pack lunch and they mistakenly put the omelet, in foil, in my pack lunch. It tasted quite good on the trail for lunch, filling several small sandwiches of that almost tasteless white bread. After lunch I walked to the edge of the ridge for the views and then made my way to the top of the waterfall, with precipitous views down. Not much water was flowing over the falls. I sat for a while, enjoying the fantastic views of the jungle canopy treetops below. Most were green, but there were some yellows and oranges, and some of the greens were flecked with white, as they were flowering. I started back after 3, sitting in the thick forest for a while, and made it back about 4:30. I rested and read the paper and for the hour before dark walked down the road among the flowering coffee bushes. A full moon rose after dark.
It seemed colder the next morning. I again walked down the road and was glad when I reached an area in sunlight where I could warm up. I came back up the steep road and had a cup of tea before heading up the path above the plantation buildings, through more coffee bushes and jungle. After breakfast, about 9:30 or 10, I started on another hike, first up to the pass just above the plantation buildings and then towards Kabbe Pass to the southeast. From the first pass I had a steep descent to the river, passing more coffee grown on very steep hillsides. This area is also owned by the Chengappas, who started out with just five acres in 1984, inherited from his father, and own 76 now. I had some trouble finding the path on the other side of the river and eventually realized I was on a trail that would take me to a viewpoint called Raja's Seat on the ridge above. So I decided to head to that instead of Kabbe Pass. I climbed through dense jungle and reached the ridge, with great views down and to the south and west. I walked along the ridge and eventually reached the rocky outcropping known as Raja's Seat. I found a place where I could sit on a rock underneath a tree and ate my lunch. The views were good, but it was hot, with little breeze that day. I had a great view of Tadiyandamol.
I spent about an hour there, both eating and walking along the ridge after lunch, before starting down about 2:30. There were lots of burrs along the ridge and I had been too stubborn, or perhaps "foolish" is a better word, to switch to shoes from sandals for hiking. I took a different path down and crossed the river higher up than in the morning. Still, it was a steep ascent from the river to the pass just above the plantation buildings. On the way I saw a deer, a male sambar with a large set of horns. I saw him before he saw me. When he did see me, he shot off.
I got back about 4:30 and sat and read the paper and talked to my fellow guests for a while. About 6:30 I walked down to the cow sheds (near the cheap rooms) and watched Susheela tend the injured bull. She told me he had 42 scratches in addition to the large gouge in his foreleg and a couple of smaller ones on his dewlap. She told me that a veterinarian has been giving him two antibiotic shots every day and that they lose two or three cattle every year to tiger attacks, though she told me the tigers have never attacked people. (Yet.) She put powdered, yellow turmeric on his wounds, followed by powdered charcoal, to keep flies away, she told me. She also put some neem oil on the wounds. She thinks he will survive. He had trouble eating for the first few days, because of his throat wounds, and was hobbling on his left foreleg.
I took another early morning walk down the road before breakfast the next morning, the start of another clear day. Soon after 9 I left on another hike to Kabbe Pass after having figured out an alternative route. I passed coffee pickers on the steep sided coffee patch on the way down to the river. They were shucking mostly dark red but some green coffee berries (the beans are inside) off the branches onto tarps on the ground before scooping up the berries and pouring them into big bags. The pickers on the plantation all seem to be immigrants to Coorg. The women don't wear saris, but long skirts, shirts and scarfs. The men wear western clothing or long dhotis, usually the former. I stopped and took some photos. A little kid, maybe two or three years old, was among them, as his mother picked coffee. They had their food and water in bags hanging on the bushes.
Once at the river, I crossed it and made my way to a little hamlet just downriver and took the steep but almost deserted road up to Kabbe Pass, arriving there about two hours after I had set off. From the pass I climbed a further 300 feet in elevation to the top of the hill to the left (or east), with great views of the jungle on either side and of the rocky, steep hill west of the pass. I found a shady spot with a good view of the valley and jungle to the north and had my lunch. Tadiyandamol was just visible between closer hills.
After lunch I walked down to the pass and then started down the trail on the other side, an old salt route to Kerala. There were steps carved into stone in places and stones stacked into steps in others, but for the most part it was a jungle path, through beautiful jungle, with only a few views out over the jungle. The path was steep in places. I descended about 800 feet in elevation over about 45 minutes before turning around and coming back up, which took a little over an hour. I walked back down the road and reached the river about 4:30, as the coffee pickers I had seen in the morning were cleaning up. There were about ten of them washing up in the river. It looked like three generations: three or four old people, the rest younger, and the little kid. One man mimed a camera, so I took photos of them, for which they happily posed, except for the little kid, who seemed quite bewildered and on the verge of crying. His mother did her best to try to make him smile, but he was too scared. After they left I sat on the rocks next to a pool, with all sorts of little bugs on the surface of the water, and ate the remnants of my pack lunch, cookies and a cucumber. I started up the steep trail about 5, passing bags filled with coffee under the now berry less bushes and got back about 6. A giant moth, perhaps three or four inches wide, invaded my room that night. I couldn't get it to fly out and eventually had to swat it, grab it by its wings and throw it out. There were also lots of butterflies on the trails.
After another early morning walk up and down the road below the plantation buildings before breakfast, I spent most of the next day relaxing. As on most days, I did check out the coffee berries and pepper drying in open areas around the buildings. The workers spread them every morning after pushing them into piles and covering them with plastic tarps every afternoon. Susheela told me coffee takes about eight days to dry, or around twelve if it is rainy, while pepper takes about five. They sell the coffee to a broker about ten miles away. The coffee plant is the robusta bush and the coffee fairly weak, the guests who are coffee drinkers have told me.
I had finally decided to leave Honey Valley, but wanted to spend one last day relaxing in that beautiful spot. I sat and read and watched the birds. There were just two of us for lunch. I took a short walk about 4 and talked with Susheela afterwards. She showed me pepper growing on vines clinging to a tree trunk and told me the bull is doing well. It knocked over a fence getting to some plants near the cow sheds. Below, at another farmhouse, a woman was dancing in the clearing before the house. Susheela smilingly said she was drunk. There had been a holiday the day before. Susheela said, "One day holiday, one day hangover." That night the sky was full of stars in the clear air before the moon rose.
A little after 2 we arrived in Madikeri, the main city of Coorg, at an elevation of about 3500-4000 feet and with about 30,000 people. It is a hilly, pleasant town, with a small fort on a hill, and I walked around after getting a hotel. The native people of Coorg, or Kodagu, are called Kodavas and are light skinned and thought to be perhaps of Kurdish or Persian ancestry, perhaps arriving in India's northwest when the Persian Empire conquered the region in the 6th century B.C. and subsequently making their way to south India. Some speculate they may be descended from Alexander the Great's Greek troops. They have a strong military tradition, having maintained their independence for centuries, including fighting off Tipu Sultan from Mysore in the late 1700's. In 1834 the British established a protectorate following an appeal by nobles against a despotic ruler who was killing off his relatives, and others, apparently as a job protection program. It failed, as the British deposed him. The Kodavas make up only about one-sixth of the population now, with many immigrants from Kerala and other parts of south India.
I walked to the fort on a hill in the center of town. Inside the former palace of the raja now houses district government offices. There is also a church inside the fort, now a museum. I walked around inside the fort and atop the walls and then walked to Raja's Seat on the west side of town, passing a couple of statues of military men, including one who was India's army chief of staff in the 1960's. Raja's Seat is a little park looking out over the hills to the west. I watched the sun set through the clouds about 6:30. My cold water bucket bath was a little chilly that night.
The next morning I walked through town and then north for about three or four miles, along narrow roads, to Abbi Falls. There were ups and downs, but the sky was cloudy for most of the morning and it wasn't too hot. Coffee was blooming all along the route, emitting a wonderful odor. Many other flowers, including poinsettias and bougainvillea, lined the route. It took me about two hours, with a steep descent at the end, to reach the end of the road and the path through more blooming coffee bushes down to the base of the falls. They fall about 70 feet, but in steps with the last drop perhaps 40 feet. I spent about three hours in that beautiful area, at the falls and wandering along the trail through the coffee. I sat for a while and ate raisins and cashews I had brought from Madikeri. Quite a few Indian tourists came through. At one point a great cacophony of cicadas sprung up, for no apparent reason, and then subsided after maybe fifteen minutes.
Sometime after 2 I began the walk back to town. The sun was out and it was hotter than in the morning, but I enjoyed the views and the smell of the coffee blossoms. An elderly Kodava man along the way explained the names of some of the flowers. Coffee berries were drying on a tarp in front of one house, and an elderly woman was shifting them around with her feet, so that they would dry evenly, I guess. By about 5 I was back at the northern outskirts of town, where the tombs of the rajas are located. Rain appeared to be imminent, but the black clouds passed without rain as I explored the tombs, dating from about 1800 and in Indo-Saracen style. I got back to my hotel about 6.
The sky was clear the next morning and about 10:30 I left on a bus that traveled southwest for about 25 miles, through more coffee plantations and a few small towns and crossing over the Kaveri River, one of India's seven holy rivers, whose headwaters are in Coorg, to Kabbinakad, nothing more than a junction with a few shops. Kabbinakad is perhaps 800 feet lower in elevation than Madikeri, but from the junction a jeep took me up a steep road for about two miles to Honey Valley Estate, a coffee, pepper and cardamom plantation with rooms for tourists. It is located up a beautiful valley, with coffee growing under huge jungle trees. I checked into one of their cheap (only 450 rupees, about $8, a night) but comfortable budget rooms and then had a delicious all-you-can-eat buffet vegetarian lunch for 150 rupees with a couple from Hyderabad, an architect and his wife, who had arrived that morning.
The plantation is at about 4000 feet elevation and was started as an apiary, a bee farm, in 1984. By 1991 it was India's largest producer of honey, 6000 kilos, or 13,200 pounds, a year. In 1994 a disease from Thailand that arrived overland through Burma killed off the bees and they switched to coffee and tourism. The Kodava couple, Suresh and Susheela Chengappa, who own the place, originally lived in a mud house with no electricity and no access road, just a trail.
The valley has has grass topped hills on either side, with jungle on the slopes, and about 3 I walked up to the pass only about 300 feet higher in elevation than the buildings and then up Manjamotte, the hill to the east of the valley. I got back about 6 and was delighted to find that there was hot water for a bucket bath in the communal bath house for the cheapest rooms. I had another great meal for dinner. Breakfasts are 100 rupees, lunch and dinner 150, and if you want an egg it is 15 per egg. So it was costing me only about $15 a day to stay at that beautiful place.
After a great night's sleep in the cool air, I got up before sunrise and walked for almost two hours before breakfast. Birdsong filled the cool morning air as I walked among blooming coffee bushes, flowers and tall jungle trees. I spent a quite a while at breakfast talking to the other guests, both Indian and foreign, before setting off a little before 11 to climb up the steep path to the ridge to the west of the valley. It is more than a thousand foot climb in elevation to the top, where there are great views in all directions, including of the jungle filled valley below. I could make out the red tile roof of one of the plantation buildings through the trees. Clouds obscured Tadiyandamol, Coorg's highest peak at about 5800 feet, to the southwest. I walked along the ridge, with some sun and some clouds, and made it back down in time for lunch, after about three hours' hiking altogether.
After another great lunch and reading the newspaper, I left a little after 3 on another hike, this one up to the pass above the valley and then along the side of a hill to a river that comes down a waterfall. It started raining about half an hour after I left and rained for about 20 minutes, hard at times. I pulled out my umbrella and continued along the path as the rain stopped. Eventually I had a view of the thin waterfall ahead. At the end of the trail, passing through a last section of very thick, beautiful jungle, I reached the rocky river bed, with thick trees and creepers all around. A large, colorful wood fungus was attached to the rocks next to the river. It started to rain again so I started back and the rain soon ceased. But it started up again and rained quite hard the last half hour of the hike. I got back a little after 6 and was particularly glad to be able to take a hot water bucket bath. The sky was clear at night, with many stars and two planets visible through the trees.
The sky was cloudless the next morning and before breakfast I took an almost two hour walk back and forth on a mostly level path along the east side of the valley through jungle and coffee bushes. As always, the morning air was filled with chirping birds. About 10, after breakfast, I set off on a hike down the valley, on the road down passing coffee bushes and two elderly men using a huge, two man saw to cut a log into lumber. I turned off on a road being paved, with men and women working with baskets of gravel and barrels of tar. I took a few photos and they all posed. A bit further on I met and talked to a young Kodava man who showed me pepper and cardamom growing among his coffee bushes. He told me Kodavas need no licence for firearms (an exemption, I later read, dating from the 1860's) and that his family has an old matchlock gun.
Leaving the road and following a path that crossed a stream, I eventually reached my goal, the Nalakunad Palace, about 700 feet lower than the plantation buildings. I arrived just as the 25 or so students at the little school next to it were saying their prayers before lunch. They were all sitting lined up, with hands folded in prayer, under the veranda of the school building. Their plates were full of rice as the teacher ladled a vegetable dish on the rice. They ended their prayers with "Shanti, shanti, shanti" and then commenced to eat. The teacher told me they are form 1 to 5, so about 5 to 10 years old. After lunch some of the boys played soccer barefoot in the grassy and dusty little field next to the school. They were very good.
I had brought a pack lunch prepared by the plantation kitchen and ate it on the veranda of the palace, really more of a hunting lodge, built in 1792. It was here in 1834 that the Raja fled before he was captured and deposed. The pack lunch consisted of about half a loaf of that awful Indian white bread, a boiled egg, a piece of cheese, a tomato, a cucumber, jam and a pack of oreos! As I was finishing the security guard showed up, probably after his own lunch, and showed me around inside. There are some interesting wall and ceiling paintings. After the palace, I walked to some nearby coffee plantations that also take in tourists and sometime after 3 began my walk back, stopping to sit on the rocks next to the river. In a pool of water along the river several large insects (an inch or more long) were on the surface, seeming anchored by their front two and back two legs, while the middle two moved back and forth like oars, quite vigorously at times. On the way back I passed the road workers again and made the steep ascent to the plantation buildings, arriving sometime after 5. I had a good view of the ridge I had climbed the day before. I sat and talked with some foreign yoga and meditation students up for a day from Mysore before taking a bath. The moon rose over the hill to the east before dark.
The next morning I took the walk along the east side of the valley again before breakfast. About 9:30 I set off with two other in hopes of reaching the top of Tadiyandamol. The plantation gives you a hiking guide book, but it is dated and unclear at times. We reached the ridge near the top of the waterfall, with great views of the jungle below and the next ridge, with views all the way to Kerala to the south and west. Tadiyandamol was visible, but we had trouble finding the proper route. Eventually, we found it and continued along the ridge, with great views, but lots of burrs clinging to my legs and feet. Eventually, I put on my trouser extensions to protect my legs. I should have worn shoes instead of sandals. We stopped for lunch in a shady spot along the ridge and continued walking until about 2, when we decided that it would take too long to reach the top and get back before dark. We made our way back, finding an easier route where we had had trouble before. Two of us sat for about an hour on the top of the ridge before making our way back down about 6.
The next morning I again took a walk, for about an hour and half, along the eastern side of the valley before breakfast. I relaxed for most of the rest of the day, reading the newspaper, a book about the origins of the Coorgs, and several National Geographics. A bull had been badly injured the day before, probably by a tiger, though perhaps by a leopard. He had large scratches on his back and a big chunk of flesh taken out of his left foreleg, near the shoulder. He apparently had been grazing on the grassy slopes of the ridge above the plantation. The plantation has about 15 cattle and they are taken every morning from their sheds up to the ridge to graze. About 4:30 I did take a walk, along the route to the river below the waterfall that I had taken two days before. The sky was clouding up, but there were great views over the jungle. Birds and cicadas were making lots of noise as I made it back just before 7 and just before darkness set in. An almost full moon rose over the hill to the east.
I took another early morning walk the next day, this time going down the road, passing fragrant coffee blossoms, flowers and huge jungle trees. As always, the air was full of birdsong. About 10:30 I set off with a pack lunch and made my way to the area near the top of the waterfall, the way we had come on our way to Tadiyandamol. There is beautiful thick jungle just before you come to the stream that pours over the falls. I sat on rocks near the stream and had my lunch. I had asked for an omelet for breakfast that morning at the same time I ordered my pack lunch and they mistakenly put the omelet, in foil, in my pack lunch. It tasted quite good on the trail for lunch, filling several small sandwiches of that almost tasteless white bread. After lunch I walked to the edge of the ridge for the views and then made my way to the top of the waterfall, with precipitous views down. Not much water was flowing over the falls. I sat for a while, enjoying the fantastic views of the jungle canopy treetops below. Most were green, but there were some yellows and oranges, and some of the greens were flecked with white, as they were flowering. I started back after 3, sitting in the thick forest for a while, and made it back about 4:30. I rested and read the paper and for the hour before dark walked down the road among the flowering coffee bushes. A full moon rose after dark.
It seemed colder the next morning. I again walked down the road and was glad when I reached an area in sunlight where I could warm up. I came back up the steep road and had a cup of tea before heading up the path above the plantation buildings, through more coffee bushes and jungle. After breakfast, about 9:30 or 10, I started on another hike, first up to the pass just above the plantation buildings and then towards Kabbe Pass to the southeast. From the first pass I had a steep descent to the river, passing more coffee grown on very steep hillsides. This area is also owned by the Chengappas, who started out with just five acres in 1984, inherited from his father, and own 76 now. I had some trouble finding the path on the other side of the river and eventually realized I was on a trail that would take me to a viewpoint called Raja's Seat on the ridge above. So I decided to head to that instead of Kabbe Pass. I climbed through dense jungle and reached the ridge, with great views down and to the south and west. I walked along the ridge and eventually reached the rocky outcropping known as Raja's Seat. I found a place where I could sit on a rock underneath a tree and ate my lunch. The views were good, but it was hot, with little breeze that day. I had a great view of Tadiyandamol.
I spent about an hour there, both eating and walking along the ridge after lunch, before starting down about 2:30. There were lots of burrs along the ridge and I had been too stubborn, or perhaps "foolish" is a better word, to switch to shoes from sandals for hiking. I took a different path down and crossed the river higher up than in the morning. Still, it was a steep ascent from the river to the pass just above the plantation buildings. On the way I saw a deer, a male sambar with a large set of horns. I saw him before he saw me. When he did see me, he shot off.
I got back about 4:30 and sat and read the paper and talked to my fellow guests for a while. About 6:30 I walked down to the cow sheds (near the cheap rooms) and watched Susheela tend the injured bull. She told me he had 42 scratches in addition to the large gouge in his foreleg and a couple of smaller ones on his dewlap. She told me that a veterinarian has been giving him two antibiotic shots every day and that they lose two or three cattle every year to tiger attacks, though she told me the tigers have never attacked people. (Yet.) She put powdered, yellow turmeric on his wounds, followed by powdered charcoal, to keep flies away, she told me. She also put some neem oil on the wounds. She thinks he will survive. He had trouble eating for the first few days, because of his throat wounds, and was hobbling on his left foreleg.
I took another early morning walk down the road before breakfast the next morning, the start of another clear day. Soon after 9 I left on another hike to Kabbe Pass after having figured out an alternative route. I passed coffee pickers on the steep sided coffee patch on the way down to the river. They were shucking mostly dark red but some green coffee berries (the beans are inside) off the branches onto tarps on the ground before scooping up the berries and pouring them into big bags. The pickers on the plantation all seem to be immigrants to Coorg. The women don't wear saris, but long skirts, shirts and scarfs. The men wear western clothing or long dhotis, usually the former. I stopped and took some photos. A little kid, maybe two or three years old, was among them, as his mother picked coffee. They had their food and water in bags hanging on the bushes.
Once at the river, I crossed it and made my way to a little hamlet just downriver and took the steep but almost deserted road up to Kabbe Pass, arriving there about two hours after I had set off. From the pass I climbed a further 300 feet in elevation to the top of the hill to the left (or east), with great views of the jungle on either side and of the rocky, steep hill west of the pass. I found a shady spot with a good view of the valley and jungle to the north and had my lunch. Tadiyandamol was just visible between closer hills.
After lunch I walked down to the pass and then started down the trail on the other side, an old salt route to Kerala. There were steps carved into stone in places and stones stacked into steps in others, but for the most part it was a jungle path, through beautiful jungle, with only a few views out over the jungle. The path was steep in places. I descended about 800 feet in elevation over about 45 minutes before turning around and coming back up, which took a little over an hour. I walked back down the road and reached the river about 4:30, as the coffee pickers I had seen in the morning were cleaning up. There were about ten of them washing up in the river. It looked like three generations: three or four old people, the rest younger, and the little kid. One man mimed a camera, so I took photos of them, for which they happily posed, except for the little kid, who seemed quite bewildered and on the verge of crying. His mother did her best to try to make him smile, but he was too scared. After they left I sat on the rocks next to a pool, with all sorts of little bugs on the surface of the water, and ate the remnants of my pack lunch, cookies and a cucumber. I started up the steep trail about 5, passing bags filled with coffee under the now berry less bushes and got back about 6. A giant moth, perhaps three or four inches wide, invaded my room that night. I couldn't get it to fly out and eventually had to swat it, grab it by its wings and throw it out. There were also lots of butterflies on the trails.
After another early morning walk up and down the road below the plantation buildings before breakfast, I spent most of the next day relaxing. As on most days, I did check out the coffee berries and pepper drying in open areas around the buildings. The workers spread them every morning after pushing them into piles and covering them with plastic tarps every afternoon. Susheela told me coffee takes about eight days to dry, or around twelve if it is rainy, while pepper takes about five. They sell the coffee to a broker about ten miles away. The coffee plant is the robusta bush and the coffee fairly weak, the guests who are coffee drinkers have told me.
I had finally decided to leave Honey Valley, but wanted to spend one last day relaxing in that beautiful spot. I sat and read and watched the birds. There were just two of us for lunch. I took a short walk about 4 and talked with Susheela afterwards. She showed me pepper growing on vines clinging to a tree trunk and told me the bull is doing well. It knocked over a fence getting to some plants near the cow sheds. Below, at another farmhouse, a woman was dancing in the clearing before the house. Susheela smilingly said she was drunk. There had been a holiday the day before. Susheela said, "One day holiday, one day hangover." That night the sky was full of stars in the clear air before the moon rose.
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