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Published: March 27th 2011
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I ended up going to Coorg twice in under 5 weeks; once with my parents visiting from the UK and the second time on a school trip with around 25 M1s (11-12 year olds)..so I’ll cover both trips!
Coorg is around 6 hours’ drive from my current home in Bangalore. Through a travel agent I used for Sri Lanka, I booked a small Tata taxi and luckily my parents, our luggage and I managed to all fit in. I’d looked in my Lonely Planet previously and booked us to stay 3 nights, 4 days at Golden Mist Plantations in Coorg, a Dutch-owned plantation.
The road to Coorg wasn’t bad until we got to Madikeri area; up til then the road was pretty smooth with lots of Café Coffee Days dotted along the road every few miles, so I had an iced coffee or two along the way. Our driver got a little lost as none of us had been to this place before but eventually we arrived at Golden Mist, which was down a relatively steep and bumpy path surrounded by coffee plants as far as the eye could see. We were welcomed and offered tea and started settling
in. As you can work out from the pictures, we stayed in two separate little cottages next door to each other, overlooking rice fields. Each had a double bed, toilet and shower, which was hot as long as you switched the heater on maybe 10-15 minutes before, just like my one at home. There’re also steps leading up to a loft-type space above the double bed so technically you could fit 3 people in the cottage but I didn’t want to put up with my parents’ snoring! There’s also one more larger bungalow nearby as part of the plantation, but that’s it, so if you want peace and quiet, it’s the right accommodation for you.
Whilst in Coorg we were taken on a plantation tour by one of the owners where he proceeded to test our scant knowledge of what e.g. a guava, orange, pomolo, cardamom tree looked like and showed us the sheer amount of produce grown on the plantation, including pepper, coffee and tea. At the end of our stay we bought some packaged tea, coffee and delicious red rice, which is kind of like brown rice but different, definitely something I hadn’t encountered before.
The
food at Golden Mist is another thing to recommend it. 3 meals a day are included in the price plus endless tea and coffee although the tea is pretty strong! It’s Indian based of course and lots of variety: chapatti, red rice, beans, salad, dal, pasta, chicken cooked on the open fire..really, really good. I would definitely recommend it as it’s peace and quiet personified and I wouldn’t hesitate to go there again.
While we were there we also stopped at the Tibetan village, its primary draw being a Golden Temple, and also at Madikeri where you can pick up spices, honey, tea, coffee etc. I picked up some masala chai and some saffron which was ridiculously cheap, like 1 pound 50 pence equivalent, and also some Coorg honey. Apart from that we took it easy, walking around the plantation, reading a lot and unfortunately I had to do some marking and planning as the new school term was fast approaching!
That was soon after New Year’s Day this year..then I was back in Coorg 6 weeks later with 2 other teachers and our M1s who I teach English and Humanities too..well, I try. We took 2 big
buses and although I hoped they would be quiet at least some of the 6-7 hour journey they were pretty hyped up even at 6am in the morning when we left! We stayed at Civet Creek Camp named after the elusive civet cat in the area. It is endangered as it is hunted for its meat by us evil old humans. The girls’ tents were several metres away from the boys’ tents but the 2 groups were a mixture. We were there for 5 days. Days started early, getting up at around 5.45am and the teachers (me included) sneaking a cup of tea to warm us up. It was very cold in the morning and evening compared to Bangalore so I wore a top and 2 jumpers! We alternated activities and ended up doing a kind of adventureland obstacle course involving rope systems, visiting Dubare Elephant Camp, walking to a waterfall and back, and doing a hike up one of the highest hills in the area.
The hike was the biggest challenge. It was for me and I am fitter than some of these kids who sit in front of the computer/TV in their free time, and I found
it hard at times. It took a total of 7 hours including having lunch at the top but even with a few reluctant kids we all made it up and down, which was great to see. The kids seemed to really enjoy the trip and hopefully it’ll happen next year too.
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Monalisa
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Your blog is very nice..cheers :-)