Colonial Coorg

And so, unfortunately, came the time to depart Rajat and his family. We had an excellent final breakfast, complete as usual with great banter from Ravi, before setting off for our final outing – the Coonoor market for the spices we had used in our cooking class. It was an emotional farewell to Renu at the gate as we departed the homestay for the final time. We arrived in Coonoor and were taken to the Kumar’s ‘local’ stall. The guy there monkeyed around his packed little area finding our required bits and pieces, whilst Ravi directed things and ticked spices names off the list. By the end we had acquired a veritable mountain of spices, including cardamom, fennel seeds and a not insignificant number of large delicious-smelling cinnamon sticks!

We then drove to meet our driver for the next leg of the journey. Another sad farewell to the rest of the family, with promises aplenty of visits should they ever come to the UK, and we were off on the drive to the Coorg region. It was fair to say our driver was not the most confident or speedy, especially given the fact that he was driving a brand new car (plastic still on most of the fittings!). So with an agonizingly slow first gear descend from the Nilgiris (whiiiIIIIIIrrrRRR!) at about 4mph the whole way down with excessive braking, a couple of direction requests and a stop for the driver to try to find his stolen mobile phone (bribes changing hands right and left), we made the journey in just over 7 hours… and were very glad to get out!!

As we drove through the gates of the huge ‘School Estate’ colonial coffee plantation, we could tell this was going to be something special. The driver dropped us off outside a huge house saying these people are ‘very rich’, and the (very proper) owner came out to greet us. We were shown to our lovely room, with views out onto the manicured gardens, all dripping with new rain. We were brought tea immediately, and then one of the servants was instructed to take us on a ‘very brisk’ walk around the coffee plantation. He set off at a cracking pace in flip flops and an umbrella whilst we skidded around after him on the muddy slopes and coffee plants, glad to be doing some exercise.





The 250 acre coffee plantation was completely saturated with rain, and the noise from the cicadas was tremendous. Along the way we spotted little frogs that hopped beneath our feet, and a huge poisonous millipede… about the size of a frankfurter! We guessed we were topping the 4mph achieved by our driver on the way round!

After a quick shower we went through to the huge immaculately-kept main house for gin and tonics with the owner and her husband, and we chatted on the porch garden about private schools and golf courses. We felt like nineteenth century British noblemen as the servants scurried around! Even better was when we were escorted over to the private dining hall to be greeted by a huge log fire and two cooks just for us. We were brought a host of tasty food, with our plates whipped away as soon as we were done. Incredible!

In the evening we spotted a few mosquitoes in the room, so decided to try out our mosquito net we had brought with us. It didn’t quite fit, and we spent about half an hour deciding how best to use it. Needless to say we got very tangled and slept with netting against our faces! At one point Gaz woke in an absolute strop and thrashed the net around a bit, ha ha!