It Begins

The last leg of our journey to Madikeri and Mojo Plantation was a steep bus ride uphill and into the monsoon. By 7 pm the sky had turned dark. We were suddenly in the mountains after traveling all day by economy bus along the Deccan Plateau. Six hours from Bengaluru, we boarded a second bus in Kushalnagar, just a few kilometers outside of the Tibetan settlement Bylakuppe, and went up from there, barreling in a clunky old school bus around hairpin curves, passing jeeps, vans, and dump trucks along the way. I hadn’t left my seat for nearly eight hours at that point, for fear the bus would leave me behind if I took a break at one of the stops. I was undoubtedly back in India, and waiting for it to sink in.

Earlier in the day, Matt had asked me if it felt much different, if the landscape and the people of South India felt like a new place. In some ways yes, but it has the same quality of messy lushness as what I experienced before. The grass is long and wild, overflowing over riverbanks and poking out between terra cotta shingles. Palm trees and long leafy shrubs jut out between overflowing storefronts, and across the verdant countryside layers of paddies glisten underneath young rice stalks. Laborers wade in up to their knees to pull weeds from the marshy ground. And on our own fertile farm there is cardamom cultivated under coffee, vanilla vines wrapped around every kind of tree, pineapples poking up between randomly interspersed Arabicas and Robustas.

This is precisely what Mojo Plantation is known for. The farm integrates a variety of crops amongst the native rainforest canopy to encourage biodiversity and thereby ensure that no chemical pesticides, fungicides, or fertilizers ever need to be used. They abide by the code of nature – that it is self-regulating, self-healing, and ultimately productive. The farmers here, Anurag and Sujata, also swear that it is economically sound, that over time a farm cultivated in this way will produce just as much, and will run into fewer problems (less pests, less fungus, better soil fertility) than farms using chemicals to force production. It will be part of my work here this year to find out how true this is. But more about that later.

So far, the farm has treated us well. Anurag, Sujata, and their daughter Maya have welcomed us into their home, and the other intern, Chitra, is wonderful (friendly, knowledgeable and Indian, which makes travel and communication much easier for us!). Despite the monsoon, we have seen a multitude of orchids, birds, frogs, and toads, and have gone on a few dry hikes. We live near the top of the hill here, and an easy walk through the fields and forest rewards us with excellent views of the surrounding valleys and hills. The shola grassland on the hilltop is remarkably different from the tropical valleys below; isolated acacia trees are the only tall foliage up there. Matt and I are overcoming our first challenges here (a fever for Matt, and leeches for me), and are looking forward to diving into the work, the community, and the culture.