Have you eaten yellow raspberries? I did not even know such fruit existed until this morning. We set off on a nature hike with our guide Mr.Vijay around 9.30 a.m. We chose a relatively easier trail that even the six-year old in our midst could attempt and walked through the western ghats. The terrain was uneven as we walked around a wattle forest at about 2000 meters above sea level. The silence enabled us to hear the laughing thrush, the bush chats and mynas. We saw medicinal plants like the foxglove growing wild, along with eucalyptus and brahmi. In untidy thorny shrubs we saw yellow raspberries growing in bunches. We tried some and they were delicious.
At a little stream, we saw crabs and frogs and lots of tadpoles, on their way to becoming frogs. At a clearing in the forest we saw, the bones of a bison, eaten through by the jungle ecosystem, probably killed by a pack of wild dogs. The kids thought this was totally cool. We took deep breaths of the clean forest air as we traversed terrain with amazing biodiversity. We did not come across any wildlife or to many humans either. We had a lovely time hiking through the silent green slopes, a path we might have missed if we had not met Mr. Vijay. He provides these guided tours for those inclined towards nature and a wish to meander off the beaten paths that are crowded with loud and uncaring tourists. More information can be found at http://www.nature-trails.net/contact.html
We were leaving the next day so we decided to have another bike ride by the lake. But before that we shared a cup of coffee with Vijay at a quaint restaurant called Cloud Street. We had delicious lemon cake and brownies which the kids slurped down with glasses of lime juice. As we walked towards the lake, we came across Pottery Shed, selling locally-made pottery, a rare find in streets which have stores that you have seen in a thousand places before, stocked with machine-made junk that has flooded markets all over India.
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