9th January 2005 – Mangalore to Medikeri 4 ½ hours

Another white-knuckle bus ride climbing 1200m above sea level. The views of the mountains was magnificent, the air fresh and the temperature cooler. Medikeri has a lot of spice plantations and we seen beautiful flowering trees everywhere for the first time in our trip. One of the main reasons we came to Medikeri was to organize a two-day trek to a forest we had read about. After inquiring with a few trekking organizers we weren’t convinced that we would get a lot out of 2 days we really needed to commit ourselves to 3 or four and the forest we wanted to stay in only had really expensive accommodation to offer.
The hotel we found was great with spacious, spotlessly clean rooms with satellite TV, WE HE! It meant that we could catch up BBC world news and watch a cheesy film at night but it also meant that we started to see film footage of the effected areas of the Tsunami. It doesn’t get any worse then the devastation the Tsunami has caused.
We did our own miniature trek to Abi Falls. This was a beautiful area surrounded by stunning mountain views but it was spoilt by the amount of litter scattered about. The majority of places I have visited in India so far have a bad litter problem. People through rubbish on the floor without a second thought and it doesn’t help that there is hardly a bin in site. You see rubbish collectors in train stations and on beaches who burn the piles of rubbish but this often includes plastic. It’s heartbreaking to see this beautiful country being spoilt. Plastic is a real problem and how it is disposed of but it is a matter of people being educated about it. Saying all of this us tourists are the ones that use bottled water more than the locals so we need to start taking a bit of responsibility for the problem to.
Still running the shithead card competition league table. I have the least points which puts me top of the league, he he!
I definitely noticed that since entering the state of Karnataka the locals passed a lot of time staring at us. You would think they would get bored of the idea after 10 minutes but no.