Our first goal after Glen, etc's arrival was to get away from the maddening crowd. We did a fairly good job by going to an agro-resort outside of Madikeri (Coorg). Rainforest Retreat is an organic agroforest that produces coffee, cardamom, vanilla, and black pepper and offers cabins in the woods along with guided treks. We were hoping for an all day trek into the natural forest but due to the high volume of tourists (Dasara festivals) they were only able to offer the short treks that all their guests go on. I was sorry not to get into the forest (I think they said that was about a 14km trek) but it was interesting to see the agroforestry systems. The coffee-and-black pepper combination is fairly common in Karnataka; the canopy trees are often silk oak (no! no! I want to scream) but occasionally something native. Rainforest Retreat used mostly native overstory and supplemented their coffee understory with cardamom and vanilla. Overall, a very nice set up. The resort was full-to-capacity and all of the treks had a bunch of us on them; none of the treks were more than 5km or so and even the staff described one as more of "an amble." We had a couple nice short walks, one to a ridge that overlooked the Western Ghats, one through the plantation, and one down to a river valley. Several families also stayed at the Retreat and the kids appreciated having other kids to hang out with on the treks. The one real bummer about the trip was the leeches. Glen came back with the first one after a pre-breakfast walk down to a stream near our cabin; I cautioned the boys about walking in the streams and figured I had it all figured out. However, it turns out that India has terrestrial leeches (haemadipsids)! Who knew? These little vampires live in the soil and emerge during the monsoon season when they surface and begin to stalk their prey. They look and move like inchworms and the first ones I saw I assumed were inchworms. They sense carbon dioxide or something and if you stand still they start coming from all directions and begin crawling into your shoes and up your legs. It took until the return from our first trek before I began to understand their ecology. Anita was terrified of them and spent most of the return shrieking and screaming (which was a little embarrassing but mostly just funny). I was pretty blase about them until I peered into my shoes and saw my Cons filled with blood. Literally. I felt like joining Anita in the shrieking and screaming department. They come in through the tongue or in the top of your shoes and burrow into your socks then into your skin. I don't know if walking squishes them a little or if they're just a little leaky, but after they attach there is a lot of blood. Unfortunately I didn't have the presence of mind to take any pictures of them while they were fat and black and surrounded in a pool of my blood (I just wanted them OFF!) but I took a few an hour or so later. If you google Indian leeches most of the hits are for places that sell "leech-proof socks." I never knew you could buy such a thing; I'd've been happy to have lived my life without ever learning about it. It turns out that rubbing lemons on your feet and shoes helps to repel them so after the first day, none of us got nearly the number of attached leeches again. But getting away from the city and getting to see new species was worth the leeches.
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Mela
11/29/2012 16:00:33
December update:
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