Blogs from Coorg, Karnataka, India, Asia - page 3

We just had 2 consecutive days off from yoga (Friday moon-day, Saturday off-day). So together with 2 of my yoga colleagues, Rosie from Thailand, and Lillie from Traverse City, I set off for the country-side on Thursday morning after 4:45am yoga class, returning this (Saturday) evening. We went to Coorg, the mountainous region of Karnataka (the state where we live), in the Western Ghats, the range that runs along the whole west side of India from about Mumbai all the way south to Kerala, the southern-most state. To keep blog entries of a length that is both write-able and also readable in one sitting, I am breaking this trip into sections: Palace Estates; hiking; dancing; elephant retirement camp; and Tibetan settlement. We left Mysore around 11am by local bus. While I’ve been on lots of local ... read more

We had planned that our last day in Coorg would be reserved to practice the pinnacle of relaxation. So we made it a point of not setting our alarms. We woke up late and had a long and leisurely breakfast. The breakfast consisted of puttu, which is also a dish that they have in Kerala. After breakfast we sat out on the porch and leafed through some more books on Coorg. We sipped coffee and gazed and the lush estate, and our host showed us seeds of different plants that are grown in Coorg and the estate. We even picked guavas from the guava tree and ate them! From the conversation with our host we found out that coffee came to India from Africa some time around the 70s. Indian farmers then began to cultivate coffee ... read more

I'd been planning to go to Coorg for quite a while, but something or the other always seemed to come up. Finally one day I got 3 friends together and decided that rains or no rains, come what landslides may, we were going to finally set foot in the beautiful hills of Coorg. And sure enough, it was raining cats and dogs and probably some more on the day we left. And the mother of all traffic jams had most of Bangalore at a standstill on Thursday night. Our bus was supposed to leave at 10:55 and at 10:30 we decided that we would be more likely to get to the Majestic (Kempegowda) bus stand on time if we walked. Heaving our bags on our shoulders we trudged as fast as physically possible (given the rain, ... read more