COORG HILLS

(** LOST PHOTOS: Sara's camera got infected with a virus and over 300 photos have been lost. We will try to repaint them with our words as best as possible **)

The bitter tang of reddish green coffee berries colour the air with their pungent odour. Skies blue and air fresh. The sounds of the forest waking, birds hooting their greetings whilst the tall dark of the trees slowly emerge from the silent mist.

The Codagu region is famed for its coffee and beautiful hilly, lush green landscape. We'd come to trek alone through villages and forests inhabited by the Coorg tribes....and instead found them as mass produced and readily packaged for tourist consumption as the coffee. So instead, we decided to stay on a coffee plantation run by a rich Indian family. A place set into the hilly ridges, with deep forest around and plenty of routes past waterfalls and over hills to walk. And so we walked-into green forests, into dry brown dust tracks, over steep edges and attacking branches, bathing in cold rivers. We met no-one, were hassled by no-one, got lost in deep hillside woods and found a way home scrambling down the river rocks, hurrying against the coming dusk. For a moment, the India of dirt and pollution, noise and vibrant colour, melted like the morning mist, in this haven of nature. For a moment, time shrank back around is and within us- we were children again, playing at India Jones, finding adventures, mysteries and wonders in the unchanging magic of the vastness around us.