Tranquil walks in the coffee plantations of Coorg

Trip Start Mar 03, 2008

Trip End Mar 31, 2008

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Where I stayed

Honey Valley Estate, Kakabbe

(Madikeri hotels)

Flag of India Madikeri, India
Sunday, March 9, 2008

I left early to get a bus up to Madikeri in the Coorg (Kodagu) region. Coorg is a mountainous area home to Kodava people, animist tribes and refugee Tibetans. It is a cool, green, lush area which some call the 'Scotland of India' and home to numerous coffee and cardamon plantations. The bus was pretty busy and initially I had to sit at the back which is always a nightmare as every pothole of which there are thousands, jars the neck and back. Eventually I found one nearer the front of the dilapidated bus. Even at the front I was sandwiched between two guys for the four hour climb on the bumpy road. I'm so pleased I'd decided not to stay in Madikeri as it was a pretty unpleasant, noisy, polluted little town. I got a small private bus towards Kakabbe (a village with 1 little shop and chai place) which took two more hours. The bus was packed to the rafters - imagine getting on a tube at rush hour and then multiply the density of people by two - we were sardines and I was lucky to be sharing a seat with 4 other people and several other arms, elbows and other body parts. Nevertheless as we wound our way up the mountain doing 180 degree turns on bad roads, everyone was fairly chatty with each other! I just put on my MP3 player and meditated through two hours of agony! The bus emptied out a bit towards the end until I actually had space to turn my head to look out of the window at the amazing views of valleys, thick forests under which the coffee was grown. The conductor kindly grunted at me that we were at Kabina Kad Junction where I jumped off to find myself in the middle of nowhere. There was a little cabin selling drinks and bits and bobs and twenty or so young men and a few women hanging around chatting and staring at me. Five minutes later a jeep appeared down a track and collected me. Ganesh (the driver) took me up the 3km dirt track for which I really should have invested in a sports bra!

It was getting dark as I arrived so I could only vaguely make out the stunning landscape setting of the Honey Valley Estate, which produced coffee and has several buildings with small rooms/huts - very basic for guests. Electricity is generated between 6pm-11pm and water available in a bucket for a few hours in the early evening. Guests come from Bangalore and Mysore for weekends away mostly IT types and middle class families. There are also travellers and regular visitors who return year after year from abroad to hike around the spectacular hills, forests and mountain ridges.

The next morning, it was so nice to get up to peace - no traffic, no horns, no temple bells just a few dogs and the sound of the tree frogs and tribal workers on the plantation chattering happily whilst they spread out freshly picked coffee beans - red and green - on the drying floors as the sun rose. It felt like a nice summer's day in the UK, with a lovely breeze by day and at night I even needed a couple of blankets. It really didn't feel like India at all.

I spent the next few days lazing around all day chatting to different guests and eating great home-cooked Indian food. The only downside was the basic accommodation and the beds were especially hard to the point that I had bruises on my thighs and legs. Most overseas guests were travelling for several months and nearly all had been to India multiple times, like me, so I'm not the only one seduced by India's variety and madness! I met two Indian guys who were having a weekend away. Vikram was from an academic middle-class family in Mumbai with English as his mother tongue, he had also spent his 20s on the East coast of the USA and had been back for two years working at Ogilvy & Mather in Bangalore. He told me that he managed a French team there who earned four to five times his salary and with three times more holiday than him. Nevertheless, he reckoned all the opportunities lay in India to rise in the ranks even if pay was not equal. He was there with another guy who lived in Hyderabad (although he'd spent most of his life growing up in Canada) and they were on a kind of first date! We talked about the implications of being gay in India and there's quite a scene but it's still illegal to be caught in the 'act' over there. Both of them were in high level jobs and had me laughing the whole time as they were culturally so plugged into the anglo-saxon culture, raving about Little Britain and all sorts of other stuff they follow on TV and internet.

On one of my days at Honey Valley, I went for a 4km walk by myself with magnificent views of hills and valleys and lots of birds to spot. Towards the end of my three days there it got more overcast and on my last night the generator cut out whilst we watched the hillside lit up by lightening and the first spots of rain fell....