i'm a celebrity.... get me out of here!!!

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sorry no update for a while, but i have been in the jungle! pretty much anyway. been staying at a place deep in the forest in the mountains in the Kodagu (inexplicably pronounced Coorg) region in the south of Karnataka.

there were PLENTY of unpleasant bugs. and MASSIVE SPIDERS. i have been very brave actually, and not allowed myself to be bothered by the myriad of crawling, flying, creeping, jumping, beetles, moths, roaches, goodness knows what. even small or medium sized spiders i have ignored valiantly. luckily, Monica has dealt with all the MASSIVE SPIDERS with a minimum of fuss so no real problem.

apart from that, it's not really like i'm a celebrity get me out of here, they didn't give us t-shirts with a phone number on or anything, and actually the accomodation was the most luxurious yet. and cos it was around 1250m above sea level, it's relatively cooler. around 18c at night, which means i could sleep with covers on and no fan which has been soooo nice.

Kodagu is famous for coffee. mmmmm coffee. all over the mountains are coffee plantations, and also pepper, cardamon etc. it's a bit strange, as it's quite hard to get a decent cup of coffee in india generally, and at home you don't very often see indian coffee in the supermarkets, so i am not sure what happens to most of it. maybe they sell it to nescafe. but whilst we were there we had lovely coffee every morning, very aromatic and sort of sweet.

we have been doing trekking, there isn't anything else to do in the mountains. i say trekking cos it's sounds more impressive, but implies big walks of several days. it wasn't like that. we just did a different walk every day. we went to two waterfalls, and an old raja palace. we met two lovely couple, Robin from england and Karla from Italy, and Mark and Jeanette both from Brighton. they have been to India loads of times over the last 25 years and full of interesting stories and advice. we teamed up for the walks as it's much nicer to get lost with someone else!

one of the rivers had a place where you could swim, like a large deep lake within the river. it was really clean and clear so i was brave and actually swam in it. that was a couple of days before i saw a snake in another stream! i would never have got in if i had seen a snake before.

don't worry, i was never in any danger. well, i never thought i was in any danger. the first night we checked in we noticed pictures on the walls of some fairly aggressive looking snakes. we asked the owner, and he reassured "don't worry, there are no poisoness snakes in this area". good -oh.

a couple of nights later, someone else asked him the same question...
"well...", he head-wobbled "about 90% are not poisoness". hang on a minute.....
"so, is there anything else we need to be afraid of?" we asked...
"no, no not at all, there were some elephants recently came through the estate but i don't think they will be back for a while"
"oh. what do we do if meet an elephant???"
shrug (definate shrug, not a head wobble...) "i don't know "
hmmmm "so... anything else we should know...?"
"well, there have been leopard sightings...."
we decided to stop asking questions at this point.

anyway, i am now out of the jungle safe from wild animals and bugs. we waited one hour this morning for a bus that never turned up, and ended up having to get another bus going the opposite direction just to get to another town with more buses. anyway, now we are in Madikeri. Mark and Jeanette are here too, they are on their way back to Goa and then home, poor old them. we are just staying over in Madikeri as it's near to a Tibetan refigee camp we hope to visit tomorrow, it has a massive golden buddha which sounds good. then we are going to try to make into Kerala. travelling is much more difficult down here in the south. the roads are much steeper and bendier, the buses more erratic and the trains always seem to be fully booked. so, wish us luck!

sorry no photos this time, i came to the internet place without the camera cable. also, no more for "cows in unusual places", no cows in the mountains (a few intimidating bulls in the paddy fields in the valley that did hinder one walk...). there was however a lovely donkey called Lily.

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Comments

[marcia]

pictures please
marcia here, i find your travels so interesting and really look forward to reading them. keep it up my dear you sure make us envy .

[Lucya]

That sounds so exciting. Wish I was there too - I would be happy to deal with the massive spiders :)