Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Chingaara and Honey Valley
The next morning we set out for the private bus station as agreed for the 9am bus to Kabbinacad. A trekking guide from the shop helped us at the bus station, just as well for the bus left 10 mins early and so for another slow, bumpy fascinating ride, 2.5 hours for
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Kabbinacad shop |
35km to a small shop at a junction near Kabbinacad, a hamlet to say the most. I approached a teenage customer and asked him he would phone and he willing did and would not accept a tip. Honey Valley can only be reached by jeep it says in the guidebook, this was no exaggeration, and the owner's son Sharath came to fetch us and finished by turning off the public road onto near 1km of steeply uphill privately owned self made stone paved road deeply rutted wheel tracks compared with the high centre. In fact we got off at Chingaara their slightly upmarket more modern but less active hotel with accommodation for about 30 guests, the main Honey Valley another 1.5 km uphill is more in demand and can accommodates another 60 in tents when needed. It is nearer to the point where the treks radiate.
Our Room is modern fairly simple but huge with equally spacious verandahs all around looking out on the forest and coffee plantation. Our room is three times the width of the double bed and twice its length without including an extra third for bathroom and entrance above which is a mezzanine floor with two single beds. A days tasty meals, coffee and tea snacks, add a double room with 24 hour hot water for 2300 rp for two. Quiet, beautifully situated, interlinking trekking paths, and some good company and pleasant staff there is no doubt Honey Valley has my vote for the best destination in South India, last year included. No TV or phone in the room and no hairdryer is a small price to pay.
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Chingaara, rooms, verandah and views |
All this enthusiasm in spite of real problems with insect bites which were a misery causing two sleepless nights. To avoid problems with my hip caused by sitting too low I decided to sit on my small rucksack on the seat in the bus because it was packed with our fleeces and our dirty washing. That I suspect was the cause of the bites which were largely only on left side and in a straight line reminiscent of Sumatra, bed bugs also caught outside of bed by being crowded into a jeep transport with someone non too clean. They lasted for days and like the other occasion were an extreme irritant. The first night all my clothes went into the washing machine and I had no further bites so I began to relax and sleep well knowing the irritation would eventually end.
Did I say quiet, the forest is alive with the sound of bird calls, we have already identified many including parrots with long tails a spectacularly red headed woodpecker viewed on a dead tree trunk from our bedroom window and on a fabulous walk this morning a small bird high in a nearby tree with the brightest brilliant red breast I have ever seen. Leaves float down as the slightest breeze meets the canopy and a more serious breeze results in a sound like a small running brook, water murmurs its way down small gullies to the bottom of the valley, and for a real waterfall is less than 1km below us just passed the end of the steep private road we arrived by.
Life is settling into an orderly pattern walking in the jungle every day, one can see for the first time what that term implies a complete jungle of tree varieties and flowers, quite unlike the British pattern of Oak, or Beech woods dominated by a single variety. This morning we took the finest walk so far about 5 km we were told, one km up the private road East towards Honey Valley proper then north on a track through virgin jungle to a point where the track turns and is joined by a smaller walking track south which goes through jungle with man made clearing giving great views of the make up of the jungle surrounding them by adding light to the shade, finally reaching an area of coffee plantation and homesteads on a vehicle passable road down to the concrete road.
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| Tribal Babes in the wood |
Another walk got abbreviated when we looked into the yard of a coffee plantation homestead where the coffee beans which had been left out to ripen and dry were being weighed and packed into 50.2kg sacks, 40 at a time were collected by lorry, Suresh later said the beans took 7 days to dry maybe even 13 days at this cooler time of year, the coffee pickers were paid only135 rp a day (2 pounds) for picking around 75 kg in that day, he agreed the sacks sold for around 2000 to 2400rp per 50kg.
We had a marvellous welcome at the farm which they insisted was owned by a single person in Mysore T C Thota and not Green Acres. They waved us in and immediately sat us down and the wife went off to brew coffee just for us. They said they had 10 pickers who I think work in pairs. We met the grandfather and the youngest boy, two others were at school, were shown the house where the family lived, now with two guest bedrooms and a third on suite room almost completed. For Christmas New Year they had had 22 guests from Bangalore and on the large paved area where the coffee was now drying there had been dancing. (Brian had told us that life at Changaara had been hectic over this New Year period and it was essential to have a fixed booking before arriving in this holiday period or you would be sleeping on the street. Guests paid 1300rp each per day far poorer value for money than we are now receiving out of the main holiday season at Changaara. The 1300rp went to the Mysore owner all the tenants made money on were the tips. The coffee they grew was Robusta, Honey valley also grow this but with Aribica.
Tamara Resort Village, once Green Acres Coffee Plantation
To the west the concrete road led to the waterfall and then continues up the other side of the valley to the new Tamara Resort Village on what was known as the Green Acres coffee plantation dating back to the 1950's with Tenderia? variety (Tamara constructors and operators are part of the giant Infosys conglomerate which above all is seen as the MS, ie expert computer company of India). The resort is now 5 years into construction with executive style bungalows and large residences cantilevered into the hill side, properties which were told would cost 25,000rp a night per person, more than ten times what we are paying all included.
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| Luxury housing on stilts |
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| Reception to be |
The concrete road on today's walk passed through extremely well maintained coffee plantation, about 90% of the trees had been cut down to provide sunlight and shade for the densely planted newish coffee plants, Green Acre had many notices giving details of the plantations including date, area, coffee type and number.
We walked hard uphill at the start, then slowed down considerably once off Honey Valley's private road to photograph the trees and to inspect the variety of wild flowers and masses of butterflies. The harmless Funnel Web Spiders were not so much in evidence as the previous day.
Brian Juliet and co. from Wye
We made particularly good friends with Brian and his second wife Juliet. Brian four years my senior will be 80 when he returns next year. He has travelled widely but now comes here to Chingaara for three months of winter, mid November to mid Feb this year. He was a policeman in Yorkshire, horrified at the police treatment of the striking Yorkshire miners in the Scargill/Thatcher who he felt were used almost as a private army. He changed occupation and has worked in Ghana and other parts of Africa. In 1972 he back packed from Morocco across the Sahara to Cape town and says putting that on his CV has worked wonders ever since. I insulted him by saying he sounded as though he came from Birmingham when in reality it was Wolverhampton, he accepted me as a Villa supporter said his real dislike was Birmingham City though it should have been their traditional rivals West Brom. His grandson plays cricket in the Yorkshire league and he has just bought him a new handmade bat in Mumbai (Willow imported from the UK).
Juliet trained as a nurse at Middlesex Hospital, so she and Joan, both the same age, who trained at the West Middlesex (totally different types of hospital, one a teaching hospital with nurses almost all white, the other much bigger, but without at that time a medical school, but a student nurse population from across the globe, Joan and her best friend Barbara shared a house with two South African Indians, and had a really eye opening life as student nurse. Juliet worked and married her first husband in Bermuda, her children now live in Bermuda, Florida and UK(?). They lived retirement in Morocco until the early days of extreme Muslim militancy and now live in Ross on Wye, neither have a good word to say for the USA.
A younger couple from Ross on Wye are here at their recommendation for a couple of weeks, they have just embarked on a year long travel and quizzed me a good deal about practicality of our kind of travel in China, of which she had heard several problems, which I probably avoided by two years of study of Mandarin at the Chinese Centre on Kingsway (study being part of Tycoch College), even though I have no ability whatever at reading Chinese except in the romanised form of Pinyin.
As time goes by we get to learn more of our companions and very interesting lives they have had, Brian especially, who had enjoyed his time as a village bobby but left the service in protest at the introduction of Panda Cars and the recruiting of university graduates who relied on the likes of him because they knew nothing of practical policing but soon got preferential promotion. Then he got into business in Ghana in partnership with a Ghanaian university biology professor starting an oil palm scheme. The professor got involved politically but both were accused of involvement in a political plot to overthrow the government and were arrested. He escaped via an upstairs window and legged it to the British Embassy who smuggled him out of the country. His partner was executed.
On return to the UK he worked on leisure facilities like swimming pools and football pitches for Enfield in London, working his way up from pool attendant to administrator.
On retirement he converted a small lorry into a motor home and whilst on holiday in Portugal met up with someone who had made a similar lifestyle change to a mobile home but on a far larger scale and was living in retirement in Morocco. So he went back to the UK and converted 30 ft long Mercedes 814 lorry into a 24ft by 10 ft living space with raised bed, voltaic solar panels with storage in a bank of 24 volt batteries and even an inverter to supply AC to run a washing machine. Juliet and he took this to Morocco 100km south of Agadir on the edge of the Sahara and lived in the local community for 3 years, then moving into a house for another 3 years but leaving fairly soon after the start of the second Afghanistan war and the associated backlash from the Muslim populace.
They are now spending their 7th successive winter in India. They lives on a 'mobile home estate in Ross', has just sold his car and spends the summers gardening in huge pots which a landscape gardener friend has surplus from dealing in the supply of mature trees. He has just been picking my brains about Thailand since he intends to change of venue next winter.
Writing 21 Jan
Still at Honey Valley perhaps for three more nights.
The start of two poor nights of agony trying to avoid scratching whilst itching almost entirely of my left side which I will write about easily enough from the leisure of home. I had long lasting bites, in a straight line reminiscent of bed bugs in Indonesia. The first morning I made a complete change of clothing and the old went into the washing machine, since then there have been no more bites but the itching goes on. Nevertheless I am now able to relax in this beautiful place knowing now the problem is not with my bed. The quiet is mysteriously disturbed at around 5pm every day by what sounds like heavy gun fire.
The third day we started walking down the original jeep road which starts from Chingaara and eventually joins with the concrete road which runs from Kabbinacad Junction to a modern resort development. But before we got to the road a noise rather harsher than a chain saw made me divert into the bush to investigate. Far below was a tractor and I came to realise that the noise was the pumping up of compressed air, all became clear when the drilling began, confirmed by the bare rock face below. This was small scale quarrying and each evening they were blasting hence the early awakening.
Every evening between 5 and 7.30 the electricity fails and the house would be in darkness but for the use of torches which are now always to hand.
Trekking from Honey Valley proper
Fourth days walk we got Sharath (pronounced Sharatt) to advise them to expect us for lunch at Honey Valley proper and we again walked the 2 km uphill to Honey lodge where we had an interesting conversation with Sharath's father Suresh who was responsible for this homestay development after the bee failure caused by a virus from Thailand in 1994. He told us the bees were now recovering and they still had representatives of the whole genetic stock which was now divided into three categories 'at risk', 'resistant' and 'immune', and he expected complete recovery in 5 to 10 years. His Honey Valley estate had been the largest estate producing honey in India with a harvest of around 90 tonnes per year, at that time he also cultivated cardamon. To rescue the business he constructed the homestay buildings, switched agriculture to coffee and pepper. Chingaara took another thre years to build and was opened a year last September, he has plans for adding some bungalows.
At the moment it is occupied by us two Brians and wives Joan and Juliet, so it is a little too quiet, world travelling solicitor Sue and Paul have moved south to Kerala and an attractive young German couple who kept very much to themselves have moved on. They occupied their days with walking until mid afternoon with a picnic lunch until he injured his toe and then shared their time between playing cards and letter/word games and retiring to their bedroom, from which they usually emerged with give away wide smiles.
After the discussion with Suresh he pointed the direction to the Dry Junction Pool from which all the treks start. The book illustrates 18 treks which starts on one of the eight paths which radiate from there, 6 short 2 hour walks, another six 4 hour advising picnic lunch, 4 long and 2 all day. We obviously chose to start down the wrong path for the trek to the bottom of the of the water fall, rated the easiest and flattest, though nothing can be too flat in an area nearby 1750m mountains. Nevertheless we had an interesting walk though we got back exhausted just halfway through the lunch hour.
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| Blondie in the hills |
Today Sharath took us, with Brian and Juliet down to the Kabbinacad road by jeep in to time to catch the bus to Virajpet for a pleasant day checking out ATMs, finding onward buses, coffee and lunch, and chatting. Brian's Nationwide debit card had been stopped but after a short call to Britain on his Indian mobile he got it reinstated.
The road to Mangalore from Madekeri has been out of action due to a landslide for over 12 months so we considered our best onward route was to return to Kannur north Kerala where we spent 3 happy days last year, but though the State bus runs at 12.15 it goes to the coast somewhat south of Kannur whereas the cheaper better private bus leaves at 2.20pm for a 3 hour direct trip. Still we know the location of a good hotel in Kannur which is quite close to the railway station so a train to our next destination Upudi looks attractive.
We are undecided exactly when to leave, perhaps we will leave on Monday after seeing what the weekend brings in the way of Indian week-enders, maybe on Sunday hoping the bus times will be the same as weekdays.
As Suresh drove us back from Honey Valley told us a great deal more. The trees which are pollinated by birds have flowers which attract bees by being visible since they grow out of the top of the canopy (and there are some spectacular examples here with flame orange flowers) or the leaves fall as the flowers come out, again to make them visible to the birds. He pointed to one tree which had an almost silver trunk beside it, so same in colour and diameter that it might have been a 6 inch plastic pipe. He said the limiting factor in these high canopy forests was sunlight and so certain trees had started to grow tall extension leaders that eventually bent over suddenly the top end crashed to earth where it formed roots, instead of germinating and growing from ground level their early development was done at canopy height.
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| Propagates itself by falling & regrowing |
We had wondered how they came to be the biggest producer of honey in India harvesting wild honey by climbing tall trees, but Suresh explained in the interests of large scale production they used large artificial hives. I see in yesterdays Guardian (10 March 2011) that the size and concentration of large hives is blamed for accelerating the propagation of the viruses which are now decimating the bee population. It was virus from Thailand which devastated Honey Valley and caused the transition to coffee and tourism, though there is little sign of large scale coffee production.
Writing from Upudi on 26 Jan We did two other short treks at Honey Valley the first called The Ridge gave superb views from a bare mountain top, pity we didn't do it a day later they saw 12 elephants on the ridge. The last day we walked the correct route to the Bottom of the Waterfall, not much water so not too spectacular, but walk was superb with free views on narrow path on the edge of mountain. I over-balanced once, probably as a result of catching my foot against a rock at the side of the narrow path and fell a little more than body height head first down near vertical cliff, which being full of undergrowth stopped my fall, though I was more than a little nervous whilst I changed to an upright position, but then got back up with little delay.
For both treks we had booked into Honey Valley for lunch and the last day we met two more travellers, 55ish this time. An Englishman now living in Nelson, South Island New Zealand with his partner, on learning our women were Joan and Juliet he decided to be Jay and his other half adopted Brian. Very interesting couple one had taught a second language to native people in Alaska, where Jay has also lived. He was very well read and had just completed a degree in literature, and in particular was reading a great deal by Indian Authors, which seems a better bet than keeping an eye on the newspapers, but The Hindu is particularly good, very much in the high percentage comment content of the Guardian and similar has a similar choice of Obituaries, the last being over a page devoted to the death of a 89 year old vocalist Pandit Bimsen Joshi.
Our last 24 hours at Chingarra we met two other very interesting pairs I would liked to have talked to more. The first arrivals 30ish were Sanda and Marsha they were lecturing in Computer Science at the University of Rochester New York State. They proceeded to take breakfast at Honey Valley proper in order to get an early start to their trek which turned out to be the same waterfall trek as us, though we only met briefly again as we passed them on our outward stage as they were hurrying back for lunch.
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