After a lazy morning, the plan was to head up to the Waterfall Tea Estate to sample and purchase some fresh tea for one to take back to the UK, simple right? Of course not!
As I mentioned, one wanted to save money in preparation for our final destination, Kochi hence decided to book a conventional taxi. We gave the Ibex an address to drive us to, however, the taxi driver seemed to have other ideas.
In order to reach the Waterfall Tea Estate from Pollachi, you are required to drive along the interior road of the Aliyar Reserve Forest. To enter, you are required to, once again pay and show your passport. The estate is situated high above the clouds meaning that hairpin bends are plenty…
Said bends do present spectacular views however…
As we ascended higher into the clouds, the tea estate came into view. We reached the sales outlet shack where we thought that the driver would drop us off but no, he simply kept driving through the Waterfall Tea Estate…
After reaching the summit, the driver pulled over and simply said ‘We go down now’. By this time, one was a little hungry as we had expected at least some kind of food, luckily there was a roadside shack at the summit selling snacks…
It was then back down through the Aliyar Reserve Forest stopping at another roadside shack to purchase tea, not how we envisaged the day going but there we go…
Tomorrow we get our wheels back (the accessible van which has been driven back from Chennai to Coimbatore over the weekend…definitely putting the miles on that thing!) to drive another 5 hours to our final destination, Kochi on the west coast of India.