Coorg Schmoorg. Just kidding, elephants.

Well, let me preface this with an apology for both the ridiculously cheesy title and the first paragraph of the last entry.  Specifically the "Mysore is three hours away, so it was only a three hour bus ride" part.  I'm going to blame it on the fact that we had just finished a thirteen hour day or dancing...

But anyway, on to the next adventure!  Also, as a preface and keeping a promise to Nicole, I can't take any credit for any of these pictures.  I forgot my camera so my friend Nicole was my personal camera woman like the great person that she is.

Last weekend we went on our final Jacob-guided tour.  I really like Jacob’s tour because we do a whole bunch of stuff that we wouldn’t have found otherwise.  Out trip started at 5am, which actually wasn’t too bad because we had a private bus.  And you know, time doesn’t actually exist here.  So off we were to Coorg at the crack of dawn.  We stopped for breakfast at McDonalds, which for some reason we’re all obsessed with here, which is kind of embarrassing.  But on a side note, I figured out that the factor in Egg McMuffins that make them so good is the English muffin.  They put it on a normal roll here and it just wasn’t the same. 

After a delicious lunch at our gorgeous hotel (which was right on the side of a mountain and we climbed onto the roof!), we went trekking! Also, on the way to the hotel we saw a forest fire.  We weren't sure if it was controlled or not but there were definitely treetops on fire.  I am so excited to write about trekking though because it is probably one of the top two things I’ve done here so far!

We climbed up a mountain that means “target” in Hindi.  Our guide said that his suspicions for the name is because it used to be a main trading point because it was the midpoint of two mountains with large populations.  From the top you could see all the way to mountains that were located in Bangalore!

The mountain you can barely see wayyy in the back

Our guide goes on this trip twice a day.  The trek was a total of ten miles, and we straight up walked through a jungle.  

Jungle Book status

Our guide was adorable because you could tell how proud he was of all the things he’s found on his own.  He showed us this one fern that if you press to your skin, it leaves a white residue that acts a temporary tattoo in the exact pattern of the fern.  Also, he shoed up a Eucalyptus tree and we got to smell it, which was sort of cool.  Because koalas.  Before we entered the forest, he pointed out a tangerine tree, and jokingly I asked if I could climb it.  To which he responded yes, so I ran up and climbed a tree and picked some snacks for us on the way up!  Tangerines here are super sour, and didn’t taste all that great.  But I still hadn’t picked fruit off a tree before so that was cool.  Also, I found out all citrus trees have thorns. So watch out.

We also saw coffee bean trees which were really cool.  This is kind of gross, but recently this fad came out with coffee where some company started collecting coffee beans that had gone through different animals digestive systems and then clean them and grind them.  Apparently it tastes better.  But we passed a coffee bean plant that did exactly that.  They literally had an animal poop collector that walked around the mountains and picked up digested coffee beans.  Weird.

Just before we entered the jungle part, our guide decided to drop the knowledge that there were king cobras and vipers that lived in the place we were about to walk though.  But he had never seen one.  Also, wild elephants and tigers were there.  But you know, whatever.  There was green EVERYWHERE through the jungle.  Like nothing I’ve ever seen.  There were Tarzan vines everywhere, and I wanted to swing really badly but he said I’d probably fall. 

It was like something out of avatar

Our first view up the mountain was at the perfect moment.  It was these three mountains covered with fog from some rain, and a huge rainbow cutting the mountains diagonally all the way to the ground.  

Our last part of the walk was this huge hill to the top.  We figured out it was easier to run, but way less sustainable because if nothing else, the trek showed us how out of shape we were.  

Attempted running

But the peak was worth oh.  Ohhhh boy, was it worth it.

The top had probably the most breathtaking view I have ever seen.  You could turn in a circle and have the perfect panoramic view that is right out a storybook.  

THIS IS NOT REAL LIFE

To the right were clouds and layers on layers of mountains with the sun peeking through which made sunbeams coming down on the mountains.  Julia kept calling them Jesus clouds, which was probably the best description I could tell you. 

To the left were a bunch of villages on mountains that looked like they had been covered in glitter.  The village side was patches of light shining off aluminum roofs and parts in dark.  I was super confused until I realized I was seeing the reflections of the clouds.  I had always been right under the clouds, but now I was seeing it from above…it was so crazy! 

I wish that eyes could take pictures, because I’m not sure if any camera could capture the almost surreal-ness of the view from the mountain.  At some point we heard thunder and we could see the mountain it was coming from.  Well, I assumed it came from the Dark Mountain of Doom, but I could be wrong. 

Can you guess which one is Dark Mountain of Doom?

We hung out at the top for awhile, which was really fun.  We kept singing about three lines of “Stand with you on a mountain” over and over, because it was the most appropriate and cheesy song we could think of involving mountains.  

The only other song we could think of was
"She'll be Coming Round the Mountain"

Then we decided lying upside down on the side of the mountain would be a great idea.  Which it was, but it was also terrifying because it was so steep.   Here are some random pictures that Nicole took!

Varsity Karate Kid training

Sonia and I dancing!

Ya know, just harnessing the sun

Typical girl jumping picture

We meditated for awhile which was really nice!

We then walked back down the mountain.  During which I realized that everyone probably looks their goofiest running down a steep hill.  I don’t think there’s any graceful way to do it.

Not pictured: us running down the mountain.  Thank goodness

The next morning we got up early and went to an ELEPHANT CAMP!  

ELEPHANTS RIGHT THERE!

They seemed a lot nicer at this camp.  Jacob told us that elephants will stampede the villages and destroy them when they don’t have food.  So the people who own this camp will take the ellies and provide food and take care of them!  So we went and helped the workers bath the elephants!  We were originally told not to go in the water, but then everyone else was so we decided to.  Jacob’s reasoning for not going in was because the elephants might spray water at us.  Which was probably the worst reasoning to try to give us because that would be the highlight of our life. 

Plotting on how to get sprayed

Laura went to throw water on the elephant like the guy who worked there was doing, and as soon as she did it the elephant yelled! It was kind of terrifying, but really cool. 

Elephants are really warm but have rough, wrinkly skin.  They’re just so big and you want to hug them!  They’re very kind too, if you got in front of them they would rest their trunk over your shoulders and just hang out.  At the feeding area I was standing in front of one and it put its trunk in my hand like we were holding hands!   

It was a secret handshake

We found a baby in the feeding station, and we went to go over to feed it but they yelled at us because the baby tried to climb over the wall to us! It was adorable, and strangely human-like, like a baby trying to get down from a couch or chair. 

It's a baby!

Although we couldn’t feed baby elephants, we followed some of the workers as they took about three of them to the water and helped bathe them!  They were about as tall as me, and I wanted to steal them so bad!  

Chillin out, maxin, relaxin all cool

THEN WE RODE AN ELEPHANT!  If you read my first post about elephants, we decided not to do it at the original place.  But here their eyes seemed happier and the people treated them with care, so we decided it was ok.  I had a smile bigger than I could ever remember.  Literally so cool.  They’re bumpy and you sway back and forth and I want to ride an elephant instead of driving a car.  But of course now I can't find a picture of it.  Sorry!

After the best event of my entire life, we went to a nature park.  We didn’t have very long but we just kind of hung out and walked around.  We found some spotted deer and one that I named killer came up and kept licking my hand.  It was awesome.  The spotted deer have fuzzy antlers, which was pretty cool.

The last thing we did before going home was go to the Namdroling Buddhist Tibetan Monastery.  It’s the second biggest Tibetan Monastery in India, and the land is on a lease for 100 years to Tibetan monks.  India will keep leasing it to them for however long until it’s safe back in Tibet.  

This was their main meeting room, not even a temple!

Families will send their sons at 6 or 7 years old until they’re 18.  Once they’re 18, they can decide to stay a monk or leave the monastery and get married or whatever they want to do.  It was funny seeing little boys in the monk uniforms, because while the older men are very calm and very religious, little boys are still little boys.  They would run around and goof off and play.

Baby monks! 

The monks just kept going about doing their thing and didn’t acknowledge any of the tourists, which I loved.  It truly is their home, and I like that they won’t change their ways just because of their surroundings.  In the temple, these three teenagers were playing these three giant didgeridoos and dancing around like goofballs.

The entrance to one of the temples!

In the temple there were three HUMONGOUS statues that were made of copper with gold plating.  They were of three important people in the Buddhist religion.  

Hello statues!

I wish I could have learned more about it, because it seems so interesting, but there were only about three plaques to read about it.  From what I gathered, it centers around the idea of enlightenment, which is basically harmonizing compassion and wisdom, while not using either exclusively. 

There were beautiful flowers all around the grounds…I was a little obsessed.  There was also an exact replica of the monastery in Tibet, which apparently is roughly in the shape of an elephant in the mountainside where it is.  

On the way home, we went to dinner at this place that was shaped with a giant lotus flower.  We were super pumped because it looked really cool, but instead we got an experience to realllllly test how we fit in here.  We were in a building off of the main building that was surrounded by windows.  Because the windows were open, it was night, and there was food and lights inside, there were bugs EVERYWHERE.  We were covering our drinks with napkins and barely opening it when we took a drink.  And it was a race to eat our food when it came.  I actually don’t think I’ve ever eaten that fast in my life.  We kept asking for more and more napkins and the waiter looked at us like we were the most annoying Americans to ever enter India.  Which may not have been far from the truth.  The straw that broke the camels back was when we looked at Hannah’s head and there was like 27 bugs just hanging out in her hair.  I’m pretty sure it was some higher power testing us and asking “CAN YOU REALLY HANDLE INDIA?!?!”  I'm proud to say that we can, in fact, really handle India.

But we were rewarded on the way home with the most beautiful sunset in crazy colors.  There was purple clouds above and orange/pink sides of clouds that looked a lot like mountains and it was all behind lines of palm trees.  So pretty.  So all bugs and cobras aside, the weekend was a success.