Day 97-98: Out in the Wilderness, One Last Time
These last few weeks of the trip include many different
‘lasts’. The last few flights, the last few beers to try, the last few nights
away from my comfortable bed that is waiting for me at home. Well, in this
spate of ‘lasts’ I was able to squeeze in a ‘first’. I have only once prior
been to a Coffee Estate in India, the playgrounds of so many of my Mangalorean
Ancestors and their contemporaries. I was five that last time, with little
memory of the experience. When my cousin invited me to her friends Estate for a
weekend getaway with her, her husband and a small group of their friends, I was
excited.
To be honest, when I left Japan I had a terrible feeling of
“Why am I going back to India, let’s just go home”-itis. Some of it may have
been the fact that the plane opposite mine was heading to JFK. The other reason
was that I was leaving my little 1st-world, good weather haven of
Japan for a hot, humid stay in India. After my experience in the estate, I’m
glad I went back to India. That’s about as good of an endorsement as I can give
it.
To be honest, there’s not too much I can legally say about
what we did at the estate, so I’ll say all the legal things (and you can fill
in the rest as imaginatively as you like). My cousin’s friend’s estate (to make
that easier, let’s call her Aneesha, because that’s her name) is situated deep
within the Chikmagalur. I’m not entirely sure what the name of her particular
estate is, but it is located in the small estate town of Haribeil. We took a
bus there, which was a journey all to itself. We weren’t able to get sleeper
seats (basically beds) on the bus, but the seats recline quite a bit. The
problem is I wasn’t used to attempting to get sleep around midnight, especially
when seated upright. We all got very little sleep, and all arrived to the
estate lodge around 6 AM, sleep deprived.
We tried to brave the situation and stay awake – there was
even talk of going for a morning walk. Of course, none of that happened and we
went to sleep for about three or four hours. When I got up, I was finally able
to look around the lodge with my wits around me. The estate lodge is incredibly
situated high above the coffee hills below, giving a great view of the rolling
hills afar. It is hard for me to imagine that this sight, this sprawling canvas
of green, was located in India, was located in the same country that I know for
its never-ending traffic and pollution. The house itself had a more personal
connection, as so much of it was familiar to that of my Grandmother’s house in
Mangalore. With its high ceilings hanging over large rooms with large beds, and
rustic furniture and the winding corridors at the back where the kitchen and
barn and cabinet lay. It was all kind of familiar, though also kind of
different, because the house is still active (Aneesha’s Brother and Father run
the estate day-to-day), and it is set with all the modern trappings of
satellite television and three fish tanks.
The house also served as a little farm. Aneesha has six
dogs, all similar in color and breed, but with varying degrees of age and size.
They were some of the most lovable, needy (in a good way), dogs I’ve ever seen.
They also adorably loved to do exactly what the others do, so when we took
walks with them, if one dog went over to inspect a plant or rock, they all
followed right behind. The rest of the farm included two beautiful horses, both
riding horses, a slew of chickens, ducks and turkeys, two cats and a cow or two
(we couldn’t see the cow). This animal house (not to be confused with the movie
we went some lengths to replicate with our weekend) also had a personal
connection, as I remember being told that my Grandmother’s house in Mangalore
also had a large amount of animals. No horses there, but they were replaced
semi-ably by Pigs. The animals left the house in Mangalore long before I was
born, but I can imagine they were very similar.
Despite there being a full service kitchen, we mainly
nourished ourselves with the food that we brought to the estate in boxes. That
itself was an ordeal, with the rain pounding the box as we left in Bangalore,
and for some reason us putting the heavier cooler over the lighter box for the
entire ride. But the food, and alcohol, managed to stay relatively well
maintained, and the food was mostly good. In fact, the pork curry that my
Cousin’s in-laws’ family cook made was among the best I’ve ever had. That and
Aneesha’s Corn Bread was enough for me, both being among the top 20 or so
things I’ve eaten on this trip.
The lodge is isolated in one little corner of her family’s
estate, and while we didn’t venture out to every corner of that map, we did go
for a drive or two down the hill. First was to the river, for dinner. Because
we came a few weeks before the Monsoon Season started, the water in the river
was brown and unswimmable, but the group of us sat on the rocks in the river,
eating some snacks (while the pork waited for us back in the lodge, the
lunch-lunch), which gave me another feeling of “am I still in India?”.
Our trip back up (this trip was done by jeep, which takes
about 20-25 minutes to travel up the winding, bumpy roads built into the hills.
Quite a bit of the bus trip to and from the estate was done on similar roads,
which means two things: one, thank God we were asleep for that part of the
trip, because it would be terrifying; and two, for once, the reason it takes
eight hours to go 300 km has nothing to do with traffic. On the way back up to
the lodge, my cousin’s husband, who operates his own family’s estate, wanted to
see one of the offices. We stopped at one and he walked us through the
different buildings in the office square, the machinery, the process and how it
all ties together. It all seemed far too complex for me, as I would have never
imagined the harvesting and processing of coffee beans to be that intricate,
but that’s what the distance I am from the beginning product does to my
perceptions.
Our other trip venturing outside the cozy, beautiful
confines of the lodge was our group walk, which went down to their old
manager’s house and another processing area, this one built onto the side of a
hill. In front of us were hills upon rolling hills stretching far into the
distance, with a series of ominous low clouds draping the tops of the hills.
Above us was the hill we just trekked down (we didn’t start from the top), and
the top quarter was fully cloud covered. We headed back up before it got too
dark (which we didn’t really succeed with, given by the time we reached the
lodge, we were walking in close to absolute darkness). We all settled in for
the end of the second full day, and, sadly, my last.
My cousin first told me that the trip would be Friday to
Sunday (or essentially, Friday Night to Monday Morning, factoring in night
buses), to which I said I was uncomfortable with given my early Monday flight
to Mumbai. She then switched the leaving date to Sunday afternoon, which meant
that we were now leaving Thursday night. I still wasn’t comfortable with this
because I didn’t like arriving Sunday night at my Uncle’s with just hours to do
the calculus that is my suitcases and the luggage that has to go in them. In
the end, I settled with taking a bus back alone on Saturday night, and while I
needed that extra time in Bangalore to settle myself before the Long Haul
started the next day, when it came close to the time for me to go with the
driver to the bus stop, that little outpost in Haribeil, I was sad to be
leaving this group of people, sure, but as sad to be leaving this place. I
probably couldn’t live in an estate, but to visit, there are few better things
I can imagine doing in India. It is so un-Indian. Of course, the irony is that
the estate life is entrenched in my Indian Mangalorean Community’s history. I
experienced part of that history, and I can’t wait to again.
