Ooty - Comfortably Numb

Photo Feature: A Nilgiris montage

The Nilgiris: a deeply personal montage All pictures by SHEILA KUMAR except where otherwise mentioned. All images are subject to copyright. …

Travel: Pykara lake, Nilgiris

You wouldn’t know it from looking at the blue-green expanse of water that makes up the Pykara Lake, 25 km northwest of Ooty. The lake looks unfathomably deep — in actual fact, it is 170 feet at its deepest point— a teal-blue expanse, lazy ripples disturbing the smooth surface here and there. Straight ahead, frail…

Travel: The Todas of the Nilgiris

Where the buffalo roam I am scanning his face. Hard. Like everyone who is a temporary or permanent resident of the Nilgiri hills, I have heard all about the Todas. That they are a mysterious people, that their origins, obscured by the mists of time, point variously to the Aborigines, the lost tribe…

Travel: La Maison, Kotagiri

Misty heights LA MAISON KOTAGIRI USP: Tryst with Nature He stood at the door of the colonial villa. Some three feet from the ground, pristine white feathers plumped. This red-necked turkey gobbled at us, till our hostess Anne-Helene rushed out of the homestead, La Maison. In some trepidation, we asked if the turkey was being…

Travel: Nilgiris Nostalgia

Return of the native SHEILA KUMAR sings a paean to the enduring beauty of the Nilgiris, which was once her home This article should in all fairness, carry a disclaimer. I’m no wide-eyed tourist or first-time visitor to the Blue Mountains. I used to live there, some years ago, and in a life marked…