In The Land of Kurumba Tribes-Part 4-Reaching Tea Nest and Singara Estate

This post talks about a guided trek from Coonoor’s Singara Estate all the way down to Kurumba Village resort, going through the monsoon clouds, tea estates and little government buildings popping out of nowhere. The previous post talked about exploring the Toy Train ride to Ooty from the land of the Kurumbadis. If you’ve just arrived here, we’ve so far talked about how we arrived at Kurumba Village and spent some time with a naturalist exploring the environment at Kurumba Village.

In the evening, I managed to speak to the hotel manager ‘Jyotish’ about the possibility of a guided trek, who helped me arrange a trek with their resident guide. This needed to be planned as I had to arrive at Tea-Nest, a sister property of Kurumba Village which was about 20 kilometres away. I had to drive with one of the hotel staff early next morning till Tea-Nest, and then requested the staff to drive the car back to Kurumba Village. I would trek and come back to Kurumba village in a few hours.

So I woke up in the morning, and drove to Coonoor, where we would pick up our guide Srini (who spoke in a Malayali accent, but was actually from Mysore, who’s parents were settled in Coonoor). The drive out on the mud-road is slightly challenging on the ascent, when you need to be on 1st gear, but otherwise its a straightforward drive to get to the main road.

Faith on a slateboard at Coonoor

We waited at a few points on the drive, to pause and take note of the beauty of the mountains. The sky was pregant with rain clouds, and the sun was threatening to find its away by showcasing an orangish gaze. The rain won the battle, and I had to get back in the car to focus on reaching Coonoor, so as to pick up our guide-Sreeni.

Beautiful view of mountains en-route Coonoor

We reached Coonoor town by about 6:30 am, and were waiting for Sreeni- the guide from Nature Resorts. Sreeni arrived at 6:45 am, as he was walking and coming from his home, which was 5 km’s away. Sreeni is an active walker, who prefers walking from Coonoor to Mettupalayam, as its quicker to travel that way than get caught in the traffic jams that happen on weekends when travellers come in droves to Ooty.

Misty Morning in Coonoor

We saw a beautiful ‘Thamburusi’ flower, which was having a beautiful contrast with the light mist, the green leaves and the dark clouds. The water-droplets on the flower, were like the fountain of youth dangling on them visually.