Tea Estates from the Lake District of Red Hills
The Red Hills used to be the secret hill station of the British and is today, one of the most fragile areas within the Nilgiri Biosphere.
It is made up of seven lakes and this entire lake district is collectively dubbed the ‘Red Hills’ because of the reddish colour of its soil. The lake district begins at about 20 kilometres away from the popular hill station of Ooty on the Muthorai highway.
And the Muthathi National Park and the Upper Bhavani Sagar Reservoir are towards one end of it. Unlike Ooty and Coonoor, this area is very sparsely populated and hence remains untarnished and untouched to quite an extent.
Like most of the Nilgiris, the main source of revenue here is tea and hence most of the landscape here is dotted with tea estates. It is a very pretty sight driving around these sprawling tea estates. A typical pit stop view would include the tea estates, the lakes in the immediate background and the Nilgiri hills in the far away background making for a magical nature concoction.
When I was here a couple of weeks back, the entire place was drenched in fresh rain and thus all the trees and the tea gardens wore a very pleasurable fresh green. A very pristine view indeed!
