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.

Coorg - December 2007

Kept wondering, where do I start, I have returned from a 3 week hectic trip from India, but not sure if the details have sunk into me yet, I am still kind of missing people, places, sounds and smells back home. I decided to write my previous trip to India, it was almost an year ago, in December 2007.It wasn’t as hectic as the most recent one, so I and D could squeeze in a couple of days of getaway.

After much research and googling about where to go, I finally decided it would be Coorg, I guess because it wasn’t so exposed to the outer world and it wasn’t altered much by man to accommodate tourism. And the idea of going away from hustle bustle , and closer to nature was also the reason.D isn’t much of travel person, its me who usually does the research and kind a present a package to him to agree, which he usually does, and if he doesn’t in the beginning, he will after a bit of convincing.

I found the Rainforest Retreat resort was exciting, I sold the idea of trip to D, saying we were going to stay in a place very close to nature and which had great reviews. But the only problem was, it was booked and had no room for the dates we were planning to stay and all over Madikeri, home stay’s are very common, so googled for a bunch of them and all of them were booked and the guys at Rainforest Retreat recommended a nearby organic farm called Golden Mist Plantation, I called and luckily someone had canceled and we could get a for 2 days, we needed for 3 days, I took it for 2 days and decided to find accommodation for 3rd day after getting there, I told that to D, on our flight to B'lore, he was mad at me, I couldn’t afford telling him before, otherwise he would cancel the whole trip.

I had absolutely no idea, what kind of place, it was going to be, but the daring little adventurer in me, wanted to take a chance. We could have probably gone to the famous and expensive Orange county resorts, but it wouldn’t be as fun and exciting as this one and it did turn out to be something we'd never done before and was something I am glad I did, but I can’t speak for D on this one. Next time, I am going to plan for some trip, he surely is going to ask a lot of questions.

We started off from Hyderabad, Reached b’lore airport at around 3:00pm, btw, our flight was supposed to be leave hyd at 10:00 and we were supposed to be in b’lore 11:00, but thanks to the delay we were in b’lore at 3:00. We hired a cab from the airport to Madikeri where Golden Mist Plantation was. Started off, as usual the roads were as bad as it can get in some places, and it was getting dark and we weren’t any closer to our destination, it was past 7:00 and the road was the worst we could have seen, D started to get nervous, doubts if the driver was taking us to a different destination kept him awake all the trip and he kept asking the driver where were every time we crossed a village, town. And kept asking, how long before we got to Madikeri. Finally came to Madikeri, it was very dark, and nobody seem to know where our Golden Mist Plantation was. Thankfully I had their phone number, so we kept calling them for directions, finally we reached a dark area, couldn’t make much of the surroundings in the dark. We saw a man and a teenager waiting for us on the road, the plantation was nowhere to be seen and there was no board which would indicate the same. We stopped at him and they led into a narrow path between trees, now I was almost close to freaking out and in my mind, was planning what to do if something unpleasant was to happen, kept checking my mobile, to see if it still had signal. We got off and the man, who led the way, greeted us and so did his son and in a few minutes, saw his wife and daughter come out of a small hut close by. At this time, D was really mad at me. This was totally not what he expected. I was looking around to see the cottage and in my mind, I had imagined as one of the cottages you would see in North America and the farm looked nothing like I expected.The keeper of the cottage, led us between trees and thick vegetation to a small house and told us, that was our cottage. He brought in some firewood and got the fire place going. By now, I was ok and was a little excited to see our cottage. This wasn’t a fancy one. But it was first time ever I was going to stay in a place like this. And it was very cold. The keeper left us promising to be back in a while with dinner

And as he left D looked and me and said and this is the special place you wanted to be for our anniversary. Oh, by the way, did I tell you guys, the getaway was for our 2^nd wedding anniversary. I decided that was not the time was argument, he wasn’t happy and his face showed it.

The keeper, man I forgot his name. I am so bad at remembering names, he brought nice hot Coorg dinner in about half hour, but our mistake, we did not tell we eat only selected meat, no beef or pork, we so couldn’t eat much of it.

The fireplace kept the place warm, but got cold, when the firewood ran out, and the fire died, the cold came back and no amount of blankets kept me warm. D slept, and I was thankful that he did, if not, the morning wont be any good for me. It was mixed feelings for me. Kept wondering if I made a good choice about the place to stay, decided, will talk to D in the morning, if he wasn’t comfortable we would find some other place or try to find a nice hotel. I told myself, will let the night pass and wait for morning to see if I ruined our little getaway.

Next…more about this trip and pics too