The blue hour in Ooty

Sitting for the whole day, first in the airport, then on the plane, and finally in a car, in transit between home and our weekend’s bungalow had made us very fidgety. So, after a late tea we decided to walk down to the village nearby. We could see it from the bungalow, and it seemed to be a couple of kilometers away. It would be a nice walk, we thought until we stepped out. The path was steep enough that my knees began to strain right outside the gate. Still, a walk was badly needed, so we persisted.

The light dimmed as we walked down. The village was bustling at the end of the day’s work. A truckful of tea leaves was being unloaded. The tea gardens here are not large estates like in Darjeeling or Assam. The quality of the tea is not suitable for companies to consolidate. Instead these are family holdings, a field here, another there. The farmers collect the leaves and sell them to factories who then process it and auction it to companies which turn it into cheap dust.

The farm workers stay in barracks. But the farmers have enough money to build interesting houses. We saw these fancy buildings with signature gates as we walked back up. The climb was steep enough that I was terribly out of breath. I must have stopped every few steps, because I have about twenty nearly identical photos of our bungalow at the top of the fields. The featured photo is one of them.