Monsoon Madness!
Trip Start
Sep 30, 2011
1
13
63
Trip End
Apr 18, 2012
Where I stayed
Ooty/Coonor, Tamil Nādu, India
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
We travelled down from Mysore through two more national parks - Bandipur and Mudumalam. We saw wild elephants and more monkeys and deer. TIgers are far too smart to be caught loitering at the sideof the road!! We came down to Coonoor on the Ooty 'toy train' which is now a world heritage site. It went through beautiful countryside and tea plantations. Tthe houses in the hillside villages are all painted in different colours - much like Tobermory!
The hotel sits beside a very old Catholic Church - All Saints Church, and the hotel property was built as a priory to the Church. Our room does have something of a cell like feel to it!!
We visited a tea plantation today and were allowed to look round the processing plant. Fascinating and very Dickensian!! We were told that the tips are picked from the bushes twice a month and the best tea comes from the highest slopes. The tea bushes like water but they don't like their roots to stand in it which is why the tea plantations are all on hillsides!! The trees in the fields are silver oaks which provide shade from the sun (what sun!) and their roots take up a lot of moisture when it rains and then release it when it's dry - very convenient. The tea from this particular plantation, Swarmy and Swarmy, was shipped mainly to Iran, Iraq and Russia.
Today is Diwali so we were awakened at around 6am thinking we were in a war zone as the fire crackers were set off!! This continued throughout much of the day. It's a national holiday so there were many many people around celebrating.
We went to the Botanical Gardens in Ooty where we were mobbed (very politely) and asked if we would mind having our photo's taken with a group of people. Having said yes to one there seemed to be no end to the requests!! Heaven knows what that was about!!
Comments
looks like u having a great time...fireworks been going off here for Diwali....hope u recovered from paragliding sickness..mum says she's spoken to u a couple of times.sending love xxx
Loving the 'words and pictures'! Hoping the sun comes out again soon
for you.