Honey Valley.

Last full moon day I ventured off to Coorg, south-west of Mysore near the border with Kerala. Coorg or Kodagu is a mountainous, coffee-growing region, home to an ethnic group called the Kodava, who have their own customs, cuisine (they eat pork and drink wine) and traditional costume. I stayed on the Honey valley estate, where they used to produce a lot of honey (it is the highest region in the country to produce honey) until the bees got ill and flew away.

A last remaining hive. Actually I heard loads of bees around.Now they grow a lot of coffee. They dry the coffee on the verandas of the houses and grind it directly from there. It's delicious on a cold morning.This is the kind of view you get from up there.
I stayed in a traditional hut... and had a little bathroom with 'Indian- style' toilet and bucket bath. The water is heated with a wood fire and it was really lovely and hot. On the night of the full moon I walked up 'the Ridge' to watch the sun go down and the moon rise over the mountains.

We were accompanied by our own wolf ( all the dogs on the estate howled all evening at the moon- thank GOD for ear plugs).

It was very cold up there in the evenings (it went down to 12 degrees CENTIGRADE- sorry Diana- developed nations don't do Farenheit anymore) and this is me in panic mode, wearing ALL my clothes to go to sleep in.
A local flora interlude:
Wild dahlias.