After breakfast we went by van to the Madikeri mountain view point. Great views of the surrounding countryside with lots of morning glories everywhere. We walked further to another viewpoint too, and took pics of flowers, flowering trees too. Then we went for a ride on the toy train for about 7 minutes, which was fun. Back on the bus, we drove to the coffee plantation. It was a short ride, with extremely exotic vegetation, trees, such as palm, betel nut trees, and silver oak ( the latter used to shade the coffee shrubs. The vegetation was the attraction as well as the pics of the different types of coffee grown, from Robusta, Arabica to the broad-leafed Liberia coffee shrub. Lots of pics of the coffee beans, in different colours on the shrubs. The guide took us along the mountain path and showed us the spices that grew there too: I learned that bay leaves come from the cinnamon tree ( bark is the cinnamon ). We saw pepper trees, cardamom trees ( and I have a pic of cardamom being dried in the sun ) clove trees ( the leaves smell like cloves too ) lemon trees ( great lemony lemon leaves ) orange trees. I liked the fish tail palm trees with huge hanging braids of nuts or whatever they were. So many interesting types of shrubs and trees. After that, we went into the small house, to see the coffee processing plant. I learned about Civet coffee ( coffee beans fed to civet cats, then processed after being digested by the civets!!!!!!!!! I didn’t buy any lol. We enjoyed a great cup of coffee together. The van took us to a restaurant for lunch, then we drove to the Madikeri fort. It was not maintained well, and was very drab, so I didn’t take many pics, except to show the crazy switchboard, which looked chaotic. The police occupied the inside of the fort, and it was very very poorly looked after. One officer had a desk lamp, and the rest was in darkness. I walked along the wall of the fort, which had gone through several renovations over the years, including by the British. One Indian king, had built two black elephants to demonstrate his power. The group felt like a massage after that, but I declined, and went back to finish this blog at the hotel. Internet connectivity was good enough to upload some photos for a change. Takes time! Thanks for reading this.
Above: morning glories everywhere!
Coffee beans
Elephant ear leaves are enormous!
More coffee beans, riper I believe.....
Such interesting exotic trees
Above: wondering through the coffee estate, and checking out so many spices like cloves, cinnamon trees ( with bay leaves ) cardamom etc
Palm trees galore above, and red powder puff blossom
Hi Dave, It sounds like your days are very action packed, thank you for writing this all down so that we can share it with you. The pics above of the flowers and coffee beans are so colourful. Merry Christmas to you Dave from snowy Edmonton!
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