Tea Country

   

   Spent a weekend in Coonoor, a hill town in Tamil Nadu enveloped by terraced tea plantations tucked into the Nilgiri mountains. It’s all so green! Processing centers, where tea leaves are steamed, rolled,  dried, fermented, dried again and sorted, supply jobs to the locals. But things haven’t much           since Independence. Apparently one caste has taken over where the Raj left off; paying higher wages to their own and leaving the most difficult jobs to others of lower rank as well as bonded laborers.  My driver, Anand, said he has a mathematics degree, but even if a tea company hired him, he would make far less than he does as a driver because he is not of the right caste. Anand’s wife, Durgadevi, also has a college education and taught computer science before she had her first child. The couple grew up on adjoining tea plantations where their parents still work. They fell for each other on the school bus. Theirs is a “love match, Ma’am,” Durgadevi said.  I stayed in a colonial-era cottage converted into an inn called Tea Nest on a working tea plantation. Although the summer tourist season hadn’t started, Coonoor on Saturday afternoon teemed with weekend visitors who left me without a ticket to ride the Nilgilri Mountain Railway, a ridiculously picturesque 


train built by the British in 1908      Railway The next day, tickets were plentiful for the 7:30 am train to Ooty. Snug in a first-class car, I opened a clouded window and cold mountain air rushed in. The train, running on diesel for this leg, climbed 1612 feet over 12 miles. Views from the train:    

Views from the train

   

  An hour and some minutes later, the trained arrived at Ooty, a better-known and congested hill town. Sign for the ladies’ room at the Ooty station:    

                            

                                                                            Sundry Ooty images:  

Wood-fired tea

                                                                         Landscape painted on tea stall wall.   

 Ooty roadside stand    

   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Stranded mermaid