Day 2- 4 hours of site seeing in London. Started at The Tower and worked my way to Hammersmith and Coffee with Tori and Arwen.
Day 3-LHR to Banglore- Was picked up by the lovely Gayatri . We showered, relaxed and then went to a glam restaurant called Skye. It was like an outdoor disco/bar/restaurant. Her sister Sony showed up and we had some drinks and went home.
Day 4- We up the next morning and met up with Shalini and family and did some shopping in Bangalore. I bought an outfit for the wedding events. We then had dinner at a nice Indian Restaurant. The waiters were dressed in traditional wear. The men wore hats from a region that were like black turbans with feathers out of them. I will have to find pictures of them because I am sure that my description is inaccurate.
Day 5-We were up early and off to our first temple. We then later met up at my friend Uma's house and saw friends I had not seen in a very long time. It was so nice to be there. I don't think Uma realized how much I had really missed her. I wish I had time to stay later in India, but with 3 children at home it makes it hard. Later, we went to Kiran's father's house and spent the night.
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| The Place with the Face...to scare of demons ! |
Day 6- We were up at 4:40 am and headed out to Igoor for the celebration before the wedding. Igoor is pretty close to Hassan and Mangalore. We went to a guest home and changed our clothes. We had lunch and went to the pre wedding ceremonies. We checked into our resort which I call "The Place with the Face" and I decided to stay and sleep. The thunder and lightening rolled through the valley. It rained and occasionally the powered went out briefly, but it was very soothing to me. I wasn't scared at all. Well, until I realized that I was the only one at the Igoor Resort with no phone reception. If I had not gone there in my mind I would have been just fine.
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| Black Pepper growing on this vine |
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| Example of Coffee Beans |
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| More coffee beans |
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| Plantation workers and Carmen |
Day 7- Up early in the morning for breakfast . We had the best food at Roopa's house. Again, I could not tell you what we had, but I liked all of it. The coffee was wonderful and so was the tea. Our schedule was non stop. In fact, I could not tell you exactly what we did all the days we were there. We took a tour of the the coffee plantation. A very nice man named Maleck (sorry if his name is spelled wrong) took us and showed us around the plantation and showed us how coffee beans are grown. That there are two different types of beans. He showed how they were grown, picked, washed, dried, and then shipped to have them roasted. The plantation had a wide variety of other trees as well. The plantation was once owned by the British. They used to grow Cardamom and now they mangoes, black pepper, jack fruit, and I want to say I saw bananas. We walked a long a path where we saw a tree that had been knocked over by elephants.
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| A Mahua Tree |
There is a tree called the Mahua Tree a tree in the mango family. It is said that elephants knock the tree down to eat the fruit when fermented can cause the elephant to get drunk. Scary to see where a elephant had caused so much damage was frightening. Elephants are pests at the plantation...scary deadly pests Here is an article about how crazy those elephants are : .http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/drunken-elephants-ransack-indian-village_n_2089483.html
I'll write about our elephant safari later....what I mean by when they are drunk....they are easy to capture in the forest when they are stuck in the forest because they are so intoxicated.
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| This kitchen was fueled by biological gas from cow dung... |
We also visited a beautiful 100 year home. The walls and floors were made of cement, but the wood work inside was beautiful. The house we saw had two rooms that connected that had large pools on the inside. When the rains come down during monsoon season they fill the pools and cool everyone off. One room had a pool with chairs all around so family could meet and hang out as it rains.
The other room was similar but with less chairs. How nice it must be during the day to sit in there drink chai tea and read a book. I feel bad I don't have as many pictures....it was such a beautiful home, but I just felt weird taking picture of their home. It was sooo amazing though !!!
More later...bummer about the elephants though....
1 comment:
Fun times!
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