It's Sunday afternoon, and we're now in the (relatively) quiet town of Coonoor, high in the Nilgiri Hills in India's state of Karnataka. We've been here for three days, relaxing in the cool, sunny climate and admiring the beautiful emerald hills covered by tea plantations and forestland.

We arrived here by bus from Mysore, and then by the little "toy train" that for many decades has carried people from the plains up to the hill stations that originated during the time of the British Raj (Coonoor is one of those hill stations). On the way, we saw a few wild elephants! As our bus labored up the steep, twisty road, a little boy in a seat in front of us clung to the window and happily yelled out his excitement each time we rounded a bend and saw a new animal, completely beside himself. I think he's bound to grow up to be a forest ranger.

We're staying at a hotel in the upper part of Coonoor at nearly 6000 feet, where we're enjoying daytime temperatures that would be normal on a Seattle summer day, and crisp, cool nights. K and I are sharing a room with a little balcony overlooking a slope covered with tea plants. We awake to the sound of birds calling--a welcome contrast to the street sounds of busy Mysore. Our balcony is screened to protect against the "monkey menace," and we soon learned why: the local monkeys troop regularly across the ledge that runs along the front of our balcony. Two days ago, they came by as I was sitting quietly on the balcony. Two, apparently startled to find themselves just a couple of feet from a human, fell off the ledge to the vegetation below. The others either screwed up their courage and scampered across the ledge as fast as they could, or quickly scrambled up a drainpipe to the floor above.

Today, K, B, and I walked from town along a winding lane that took us up onto the slopes, through a friendly Christian village (many South Indians are Christian and there are several churches in and around Coonoor), and then up into the higher tea plantations that cover most of the slopes above town. Once we crossed the top of the ridge above us, we looked out across emerald green valleys filled with tea plantations and just a few small clusters of buildings. It's the loneliest country we've yet seen in India. We then followed a footpath running through eucalyptus forest just below a ridgeline, eventually passing a small, rustic shrine to Shiva that seems to be used by wayfarers now and then, perhaps including the Toda people who are the original inhabitants of these hills. We could tell that the shrine was Shiva's because it contained three small metal tridents, which are his symbol.

I need to wrap up this entry now to go back to the hotel (I'm at an Internet cafe) to say goodbye to two American friends of K's who joined us for the weekend, and are about to return to Chennai, where they're working on public health research projects. I'll try to post more news tomorrow. I'm behind right now because I've been recovering from a bout of "Delhi Belly"--perhaps an inevitable downside of traveling independently in India.