Chickamagalur

Hello Hello Hello!

Thursday morning we packed up all of our stuff and we left Infosys. It was sad to go since they had softer beds and an actual shower. We loaded up on the bus and away we went. Our final destination was Chickamagalur Coffee Estate. Along the way we stopped at a few temples. the first was Belur. This is a 12th century temple. We had an hour to just walk around and explore. Like usual they made us take our shoes off (shoes are not big in India I have come to learn). This time I was prepared though. I had a pair of socks in my purse, which I dubbed my "Temple Socks." No more bare feet!! I walked around taking tons of pictures of the architecture and statues. The ground was super hot even through my socks. Afterwards we left the temple and collected our socks. Once again we were a spectacle as Indian children kept wanting to talk to us and vendors kept trying to sell us stuff. We then loaded up on the bus and were off to our next stop.

Our next stop was Halebeed temple. They had some pretty cool statues. The architecture of these places were amazing. It took both places about a century to complete and all the carvings are so detailed. Out came the "Temple Socks" so I could walk around inside the temple. Professor Kanti told me I could get rich here selling temple socks to tourist who are not use to/don't want to take off their shoes (it is a future endeavor of mine lol). We were getting ready to leave when of course the vendors started following us. I bought a couple of things since i had lots of rupees and to get them to leave me alone.

We then went back on the bus. The roads here make New Jersey's look great. I never realized how much I love pavement until this trip. Getting to the coffee estate of Chickamagalur was rough. The owner of the coffee estate was an old friend of Kanti's who had been encouraging him to visit for years. When they heard he was coming to India they told him to come and bring his 12 students along. Professor Kanti told us our short stay at Chickamagalur would be like camping since they would trying to accommodate so many of us. Well i don't know what kind of camping Kanti has done, but this place was hardly camping. We had all prepared ourselves to be sharing 1 room and sleeping on a hut floor. Instead they had a beautiful house with plenty of room. The girls shared 5 in one large bedroom and 5 in the other large bedroom while the 2 boys shared a small bedroom. The house was super nice. In fact my first thought upon seeing it was borrowed from Gus from Psych: "I have never been so motivated to make money before." The views up at this estate were amazing. We were up in the mountains and from the yard and the bedrooms you just had beautiful views of the different mountain peaks. We then got a short background on coffee making (did you know coffee beans come from berries???) and toured the facilities. We then went back to the house and had a bonfire with hor dourves. Then they fed us a nice sit down dinner. Mel and I were at the two person table which we labeled the "date table." Soon it was time for bed.

Stay tuned for my last couple of days!

Much love,
KP