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Soon after we arrived in Mysore we were off to the 600+ acre Van Ingen coffee plantation in Kerala, the state adjoining Karnataka to the southwest.

Although only 100 km from Mysore it takes several hours to get there with a 4x4 - or you can opt for a bone-jarring bus ride - much of it through the Nagarhole National Park, once the Maharajah's hunting lands but now a part of the enormous Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve.

Spotted deer are quite common and with patience you will see monkeys, bison, elephants, leopards - maybe even a tiger or two.