Indian Friday: Bangalore to The Rainforest Retreat

I rather enjoyed re-visiting India via my blog last week. So I went and dug out the diary I faithfully kept. The events it describes have never yet seen the light of day. For the first ten days I was with the group of people my ex-brother-in-law had put together, to explore aspects of rural Indian life, focussing on small producers working in traditional and organic ways. We had no internet access during that period.

I’ve decided to share my diary with you. This may take a few Fridays. Bear with me. I suppose I’m pleased that I kept such a detailed record of a piece of personal history, and of a country I’d never visited. I wonder how dated this account would seem to the current traveller?

Bangalore to The Rainforest Retreat

Saturday 10th November 2007

Here I am, sitting outside our bungalow at The Rainforest Retreat.  It’s 6.40 p.m., pitch dark: and about half an hour ago, the chorus began. I just lay down outside and listened. All those forest sounds – I don’t know what they are, but it’s like some complex symphony.  Suddenly, one group of creatures will become silent, and others will chip in with their own song.  Many multiple groups of course, who suddenly go diminuendo, only to be succeeded by a group of quite different creatures, or an individual bird, or whatever …

It’s been quite a day.  For my part, I hiked all the way to Simon’s hotel, and it WAS a hike, where we shared breakfast.  His hotel was so not-me.  Lots of flamboyantly dressed flunkeys and a big help-yourself buffet, but no nice people making piles of idli, just for me.

Then into the mini-bus.  Bangalore seemed to go on for ages, and even when I had definitively stopped, roadside settlements and shops went on and on. Village shops are a mystery to me.  Even very small settlements have coffee shops, ‘bakery’ shops and a whole raft of others too.  The landscape became more rural though.  Palms; sugar cane;  more and more working bullocks, yoked often; goats; sheep; cows …

Lunch outside Mysore, rather early – a large vegetable thali and a glorious salt lassi.

After lunch, the climb began and the roads deteriorated, and Indian driving came into its own – overtake on a bend?  Why not? Honk and honk till the car in front gives way?  Certainly.  It won’t give way actually, so you will pass it on the other side instead. Oddly, we came to think of this as fairly safe.  For all their bluster, the drivers are careful.

Pepper plantations, coffee plantations, rice in the early stages of growth.  And still the villages came, some with very large markets which only prolonged hiking got us through.  Tropical rainforest scenery … and finally we arrived.

Here we are in the middle of the forest.  Our bungalows – I have one with C and M – are set amongst it all, as are their crops: small crops of beans etc. and others such as vanilla set among the forest trees.  I went for a wander by myself, listening to the exotic forest sounds.  Communal supper outside – all meals are taken in a shelter outside our bungalow.  And so to bed. By the way, I forgot,  Unpacking, I moved my rucksack, and a noisy clockwork toy sprang out.  Only it wasn’t. It was an angry and upset hawkmoth, and it chattered angrily all the time we were evicting it.

My next days’s account is of exploring the estate and surrounding neighbourhood, so I’ll let my photos do the talking.

Just two extracts from my diary for that day …

We enjoyed munching fresh cardamoms, the ‘cherry’ round the coffee beans (sweet and refreshing – civet cats like them too), clove leaves, as well as looking at pepper(spice kind) plants, vanilla, pineapple plants, and all the organic produce they’re responsible for.

Sights on our afternoon walk: a massive millipede; a land crab; an aeriel ant’s nest; a palm whose juice in the morning is given to young children. By noon it’s like beer, and by evening it’ll do your head in it’s so potent.

Here is a link to the Rainforest Retreat. It’s clearly under different ownership now, and much more developed than in the early days when we visited. Though from this year they no longer cater for short term visitors. But it retains its interest in sustainability, biodiversity and organic practices.

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Author: margaret21

I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.

52 thoughts on “Indian Friday: Bangalore to The Rainforest Retreat”

  2. I’m glad I had time to enjoy this experience with you this morning, Margaret. I’ve not had time to discuss India yet with my friends who toured there earlier this month. Her Dad is very ill in hospital and it’s not been appropriate, and anyway, hers was a very different kind of experience. Looking at the website I got excited at the prospect of fireflies. It’s great that a project like this has been successful. It was good to escape there with you for a little while and I look forward to next Friday xx

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  5. So glad you’ve decided to share these entries. Words and photos brimming with atmosphere. A world away from the UK. (Which in Cornwall at least, is damp and rainy today. First time for many days we’ve got no sun.)

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  8. what a marvellous experience, Margaret! I’m so pleased that you have decided to post these experiences for us to read and see the images…… An area that I have no experience of, so it’s great to see

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  9. I remember being near that part of the world for a while in 2006, and reading in the newspapers about the numerous daily ‘mishaps’ which was their euphemism for fatal road accidents. Made me rather nervous to travel anywhere!

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  11. I’m so pleased you’ve decided to share this diary 🙂 There’s something so engaging about an account like this written on the spot while immersed in the experiences. I could relate to your enjoyment of the evening cacophony from the rainforest – while I don’t recall hearing it in the parts of India we visited, I have certainly heard similar in South and Central America.

    And the driving too! Like you we learned to accept it and to realise that the drivers know what they are doing – I even rather enjoyed it after a while. But we met a woman in our Agra hotel who had been driven there from Delhi and was refusing to go anywhere else in the country by car and insisting her guide arranged rail travel for her instead. We never heard the outcome of that conversation but I suspect neither she nor guide were happy!

    Looking forward to reading more and seeing more photos!

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    1. Thanks Sarah. I’m so glad I took the trouble to write my diary. I did it, even when I was by myself and had access to internet cafes. Photos were more probelmatic. You’ll remember the days when even squeezing 100 photos on a card was a juggling act. I had a spare but was terrified of losing it, so I got my collection put on CDs as often as I could, and reduced my pixels to – I think – 5 to squeeze more on. And I didn’t take as many photos as I should have done. My camera was very much a new toy in those days. Another age!

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      1. Worse, I remember pre-digital when a spool of film only took 36 shots and you had no idea how well they’d come out! We thought we were very extravagant getting through one spool in two days, on average (each!) but imagine restricting yourself to just 18 photos a day when travelling now. Actually, maybe that would be an interesting exercise in discipline …?

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  15. I am enjoying reading these memories. You don’t mention the climate but I am assuming that as a rain forest it must be quite humid? The insects and the webs would worry me, I don’t do well with BIG insects. Getting a June bug caught in my hair once nearly had me in hysterics!

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    1. I suppose I don’t mentionthe climate much. That’s because in November, the monsoon was over, and the temperature was pleasantly warm, and most days I didn’t notice it one way or the other. There was humidity, but not unpleasant and sweaty.

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      1. I was in India in November on both my trips. Pleasantly warm in Delhi, though cold at night. Mumbai back in 1973 though was horribly hot and humid. I guess it depends where you are in the country.

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      2. Very much so I guess. I was more struck by the lack of twilight. Day, then immediately night, in about 5 minutes. Fairly near the Equator though, so to be expected.

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  17. Besides from traveling there myself, there is nothing better than reading travel journals from interesting places. Thanks for sharing. I have traveled around India myself, but spent most of the time up north.

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      1. I went around 10 years ago, I think. One of my London friends was getting married in Mumbai and after the wedding I travelled around on my own. My friend was terrified for me, he said women shouldn’t really travel on their own in India.

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      2. I felt safe, always, in India. The downside was having few places to rest, with places like coffee shops being few and far between. Back then, hooray for internet cafes!

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