Walking in the tea gardens

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This morning Ginnie was unable to join me for the walk because of her broken toe. My guide was Kingsley and he is keen totake visitors to a place where tourists do not usually go. The mode of transport was a good start. I rode on the back of Kingsley's scooter to the bus station in Conoor and then we took the service bus to a small village. The walk climbed up to a fort which was used by Tipu Sultan 400 years ago. Very little now remains of the fort except a few low walls now overgrown. The first part of the walk was a climb through the tea gardens. Trees are grown in the tea garden to absorb the dew. In the tea gardens I saw different tasks including picking, pruning, pruning the trees, spraying and collecting dead wood as firewood. Some of the tea is now picked by machines and this makes straight lines. The tea picked by hand has circular irregular patterns. In the tea we encountered wild bison. These can be quite dangerous if they are startled. On the way back we took a slightly different route to avoid one particular bison who might have become aggressive. There was a short section up through native wood to reach the fort. On the return walk we met several tea workers whoI were stopping for their lunch break. We very nearly missed the bus and had to run!

In the afternoon our driver to us on an excursion to a wildlife reserve. The drive was first up to Ooty and then down by 36 hairpin bends. Each hairpin bend is numbered. My photos didn't work out great, but we did see deer, wild pigs, peacocks and a large group of elephants. This group of elephants included a male, several females and one baby. In the dusk as we were returning we saw a solitary male elephanby just by the side of the road. The journey back was a reverse including those hairpin bends.



Pp

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