india travel diary 2007 to 2008

We have breakfast in the Capitol Hotel - idly, masala tea and coffee.  The restaurant/bar is full of men drinking rum or whisky diluted half and half with water.  As in, half a glass of whisky, half a glass of water.  They don't spend long enjoying it, just pour it down their neck.  It's 9am.  As we sit there enjoying breakfast a policeman comes in and does some business with the manager.  There's no one else here.

We catch a bus to Honey Valley, a homestay deep in the Coorg where we are going to spend a couple of days.  We had to ring up and arrange for them to meet us in a jeep as it's quite remote.  It's a steep climb up rocky roads to the top of a hill, where we meet the owners Suresh and Sushila.  They run Honey Valley in an extremely environmentally friendly manner - all the water comes from natural springs, and they also generate their own electricity from a discrete hydro generator connected to a stream.

They've got all sorts of accomodation from dorms to huts and cottages, and we take a little cottage with a verandah overlooking the trees.  There's plenty of good walks accessible from here, and it's so peaceful and quiet this far into the forest.

We brought a couple of beers with us from Madikeri as we weren't sure if they'd have any here.  I also bought a huge bag of crisps covered in chilli powder from the crisp man - a guy in a little booth with a huge box of freshly cooked crisps.  You can even buy them hot.

All the meals here are served buffet style, the food is all veg, varied and tasty.  All the veg is homegrown from their vegetable patch.  The communal tables are lively and chatty and it's a great way to meet people.  There's a mix of Europeans and a few Indians.  They've also got a great bookshelf full of classic Indian writers (Rabindranath Tagore, Salman Rushdie, Raj Kamal Jha, Kiran Desai).