Sunday, March 1, 2009

With the break of dawn, the fears and apprehension were washed by the beautiful warm sunrays. As we came out, saw the place in light, I was happy, after all, I did not screw it up. It was serene, could hear the birds singing, something I hadn’t heard in a long time and the one thing i did not hear was traffic, this was as best as it could have got. This was pure rugged nature, that man did not mess with. D was still no so excited as i was, at least now he was convinced that we weren’t somewhere in middle of amazon like forest.

The owner of the place is a German guy, Mr.Ludwig, as our host Vasu mentioned.(I had scratched my head a few times before I remembered his name). Felt sad that it took a German to help preserve our country’s nature, but on second thought, we must be thankful, if it was one of us, the land would probably be sold to one of big companies and it would have been a tea or a coffee plantation fed with pesticides, like other places around coorg. This was organic plantation, no messing with nature was how farming was done here.

Here are a few pictures of our tour of the plantation

The fireplace that kept us warm for most part of the night



















The cottage where we stayed for first 2 days,pretty basic but comfortable.














The path to our cottage from the small office building,it doesn't look half as scary as it did the previous night.
















The shot of paddy fields down below, the folks down there did notice us .And by the way we could hear them whistling and singling while working, cant imagine any of that in the urban madness.






























Here is Mr.Vasu telling us all about the different trees in the plantation.I do hear a lot of botany students come over here, even from overseas!














Up close at the paddy field, they grew red rice there, from the shadows you can guess what the conversation could be















Vasu explaining how the tea leaves are plucked and how the best tea is made from the first three leaves of the plant.We did buy some green tea from the plantation but i had to throw it all away because of its smell, organic or not, I cant take that smell.