Tag: organic farming

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.