Nandi Hills Part2

We spent the night at Silver Oak Farm which is run by a most delightful couple who retired to a bare plot of land on which they built this organic, almost self sufficient guest house. This was a really beautiful respite from the city. The kids roamed around the premises with the farm's 3 dogs. Ads who will not go near soup at home - ate the homemade sweet potato soup and Wills ate the shrimp with relish but still will not eat mine! Conclusion the food was sooooo good and that's before we talk about the home made lime and ginger cordial and home made jams and jellies! I could have set on the veranda for hours, the view to the hills was so peaceful.

One of the highlights of the trip was the walk down to the local village to get the milk for the guest house. We followed one of the girls who worked at the farm, through fields with women toiling, down small pathways and into a courtyard.

As the guest house was busy, the one cow did not produce sufficient milk, so there was a delay while another suitably milk laden cow was located. In the meantime, we waited watching village life as it watched us! We were definitely a source of curiosity. A couple of the little kids seemed to find us terrifying - to the delight and laughter of their older siblings. Ads & Wills were a little uncomfortable!

Look at these kids, have you ever seen any more natural and more beautiful! They were all so gorgeous - so happy, friendly and sincere.  Compared with our kids materially they have so little but the looks in their faces had so much more!!

The next morning, after a goodbye, but we will see you again, to Praveen at the guest house we visited a local pottery. Ads tried his hand somewhat successfully on the manually driven (a stick to propel the wheel) pottery wheel. We won't go into Simon's attempt - but determined he should stick to computers!

As in everything we have experienced here everyone was very hospital and were quite happy for us to interrupt their daily work. We also visited a small silk factory where the silk cocoons are washed, sorted and spun into thread.

We then visited Bohga Nandishwara Temple - which was pretty busy with a sophisticated crowd as apparently they were scoping the patch for a forthcoming Bollywood epic.

These sisters could have taken the leading roles. They were both decked out in their holiday best and I thought this was actually a pretty good pic!

Altho' we are still being cautious about what we eat we are not quite so fastidious. Here we are buying grapes at the side of the road. If you look carefully you'll see Adam & Simon are actually tasting them!!- but no ill effects!