COORG-ORANGE COUNTY WEEKEND

Please excuse the different texts but I have been using different computers all the time. On Fri., Aug 15, which was Indian Independence Day (freedom from British rule). It was a long holiday weekend, so we traveled. We left at 6:30am on Fri. We had our car and driver Ramu and we planned to go to Coorg which is a city southeast about 240 kilometers(how many miles?) We had a little freeway for about 1 hour, then wow. We drove for about 6 1/2 hours on every kind of road and non-road imaginable. On the freeway, you can only go about 40 because about every 2 miles, there is a speed bump or traffic gates that you have to zigzag around. These are designed to keep the speed low, as if the people on bikes, rickshaws and 100,000 buses wouldn't slow any one down. In every town or small city there is traffic galore. As we moved further out, the roads had huge pot holes and repairs that sent us flying and bouncing. Once we left the main road, after about 2 hours we were in ever thickening jungle. Yes, I mean real jungle. We drove the final 4 1/2 hours on some dirt, some tar roads just hacked out of the jungle. Part of the way were mountain trails. There was only room barely and inching our way to pass a car coming towards us. Believe me I prayed and hung on. There were rice paddies on every flat piece of earth, and where is was too shallow, they hauled in dirt in huge pots on top of their heads. The mounds between the paddies, enabled them to walk and defined ownership. The people stood calf-high in water planting and tending the rice plants. The seeds are planted elsewhere, and when the sprouts are big enough they plant them in the wetland by hand. The water buffalo are yoked together and they walk around and around making the mud ready. yuk! I may never eat rice again. Not really, at least rice is boiled. When the rice is harvested, they lay it on the road for several days, so that cars and animals and people stomp on it and separate the kernels. At the end of the day, they have short sort of stick like brooms and they sweep it all up and put it out again the next day. Finally, they load it in ox carts, or in bowls on their heads, or in cloth wrapped around and carried on their back. Many of these people live right near the paddies in plastic stretched over some wood to make a tent. The children work the paddies along side their parents and never go to school. Some of the villiages we went throught we little more than mud holes with houses made out of narled wood, so concrete blocks, many painted very bright colors, like aqua blue, green, orange and yellow. At first, the men and women were dressed in shirts and pants and sari but the farther into the jungle, the loin clothes for the men and poor looking clothes wrapped the women. Some of the little children were naked on the bottom, no diapers. They were playing right by the road, in the mud and with chickens, and cows and oxen all around. It was unbelieveable that people live all their lives like this. It was very heart breaking and yet these people had homes and food. There were large flocks of goats in some areas, and they were just being herded right down the road, we were honking like crazy and the shepherds with very long sticks would guide them, well, most of them, to one side so we could pass. These flocks were some times 50 to 100, the shepherds were weatherbeaten old men and womem. Sometimes there were 40 or so cattle. Just about every house or hut had some kind of cow or oxen or goat. In more populated farm areas, there were milk cans being driven from the farm and later we would see big milk transports. Very little purification takes place along the way, so milk is not on our foods to eat, for sure. We saw beautiful huge clumps of bamboo trees. Maybe 40 ft. in the air and 100 ft around. The spears of bamboo out in the jungle grow very large and they do not always harvest. It must mature before it is the yellow color that we know. Otherwise, it is green and black. Men take long, long poles and carve holes to put sticks in and they stand these poles upright, balancing on chopping off the bamboo. We saw some of them doing it, amazing feet of balance. There were huge banyon trees. They are very large trees, with smoothe trunks and all over from the branches are what I thought were vines. They are really roots growing out and down to the ground. Where the root hits the ground, it grows thicker and thicker until it forms another trunk, and so the tree expands. We went to one that is 3 acres, of one tree with massive trunks. The tree is believed to be at least 200 years old. The palm trees were so thick you could hardly see the sky. Not one piece of the coconut is wasted. The furry part is peeled of and burned for fire and the shells are used for carving and of course, the inside and milk for drinking. The meat of the coconut is very soft and fresh, not like the hard stuff we get in US. We were bounced and banged and drove about 2 miles an hour in many places. No cell phone service, I mean in the jungle. We stopped in several villiages and asked directions to Orange County because we did not dare to take a wrong turn out there. It is a good thing that Ramu spoke canican dialect so he understood. As we got closer to the coffee and tea plantations there were other beautiful plants and flowers. There were, what we thought were flowering plants all around. Later we found out that they were tobacco plants. In those villiages, we saw huge piles of these leaves laying in the dirt to dry and many ox carts carrying piles on them, with the driver walking alongside the cart. In some places, they had bikes and they were loaded down with the leaves. There were hundreds of fields with tall thin spikey looking plants. Sugar cane. Many of the small cities were around cane fields and sugar cane factories. Here too, much of the harvest is done by hand cutting and seperating and carrying by cart or by human. Mayatan means sugar city. I was surprised to see that there were a number of corn fields. They were harvesting the corn, huge ears and they looked very plump and moist. They climate is cool and misty all the time just perfect for these kind of crops. I will send this out for today and blog more later. Very blessed tired and safe. PTL PTL