So I haven't posted in entirely too long -- I thought I'd been doing reasonably well, and was stunned to look and see that the last post was 3 weeks ago (and it was just photos). Oops!
Anyway, we've reached and passed the halfway point of TU -- only 6 more weeks to get everything done. Ack!
Elizabeth flew over last week, so I was able to take some time off.. We hung out in Bangalore for a couple days, then went to the Coorg district of Karnataka, which is called the "Ireland of India." The drive was about 6 hours from Bangalore.
It was a lot of fun, despite the fact that our safari got rained out, we got poured on for the last half hour of a hike, and some leeches found us. Both places we stayed were small; one was a guest house on a coffee plantation, and the second was a small operation that caters to hikers.
At the first place (The Hermitage) we just took a short hike to a waterfall. We had intended to go on a safari in Nagarhole, but for the first time in 5ish years they closed due to rain. We later found out that this wasn't precautionary -- they closed because the morning safari had gotten stuck in the mud, and the vehicle sent to rescue them had gotten stuck as well.
The latter place (Honey Valley) was 3km up the most rugged "road" I've ever been on. They had to send down a 4wd jeep to pick us up at the bottom because the SUV we took from Bangalore couldn't make it. The place was at the junction of 28 hiking trails, so we took off on one up to the ridge right after lunch. While we were up at the top some clouds started rolling over us, and by the time we got back to within a couple km of the guest house it was pouring -- which was kind of fun, until we discovered that we'd picked up some leeches somewhere along the way.
