Coffee estate and Mother's day

Alert!! More pictures coming in a link to another picture blog - we had a great trip to the coffee estate. The trip there was the best part - went to 2 temples and words can't express the awesomeness of these places. the first was a Jain temple. The Jain's are cool - they believe in the complete sanctity of life, to the point that some have been know to starve to death to prevent the killing of any life. Shravanabelagola is a massive stone carved man, that takes 265 steps to reach. They don't tell you that when they encourage to go there, but it was a fun climb. One woman was carried up on one of those platforms carried by 4 men, running! up the stairs with her reclining back. They were sweaty guys when we caught up to them.

Our second stop was in Belur, which has an wonderfully carved temple - all out of stone. I hope the pictures do it justice. At these places you can hire private tour guides and we had a very nice one - he pointed out things like the fashions the women were wearing (Shorts!) and their hairstyles and jewelry - there was that much detail. Really nice place. But that was just the start of the day (4 hours into it).

We moved on to the coffee estate. Okay - I am good with backroads, and B&Bs, but this place was awfully remote. The roads. were bad and long . . . . . . and hour up the switchbacks and potholes - but we made it just before the rain - which came over the mountain and cooled everything wonderfully. Now this place was a guest house - which means a group living room, one tv, not much furniture, but a working coffee estate. I call it 'estate' because when I called it a plantation, the boys pictured a typical southern plantation, which it's NOT! The long distance scenery is wonderful, but up close - it's weedy piedmont trees and underbrush. Some of the underbrush is coffee and pepper plants, but, nothing you want to oohh and ahhh at. Summary - glad we went - wouldn't go back. But it's the journey, not the destination and that was priceless, so there you go. (anybody who has travelled on Indian roads will understand that sentence even more)

So the week goes on . . . I have some meaningful work now - which means I take it all too seriously and intensely and I am working too hard. But I promised myself that I would find some balance in my life here - and I will miss the boys so much when they go back to Texas, I want to watch out for that.

Happy Mother's Day A friend brought me a box of Keebler cookies and a bottle of wine - they are both costly and rare here! I cooked fajitas on a tandoori oven and smoked out the house. Tried to make margaritas from local limes, but it wasn't the same.

I still want to write more about the shopping and cooking and eating and generally the things in my daily life, so stay tuned and thanks for all the great emails and comments.