Excursion to
Avalanche : A Road Trip to Nilgiris - IV
This was supposed
to be the most thrilling out of the whole trip as we had planned for Avalanche
Eco-tourism ride.
As we woke up from
the bed, the valley view from our room greeted us with beautiful slopes of tea
estates, resembling a sleeping beauty. Having had a pleasant walk into the tea
estates, we started our ride to Avalanche.
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| Tea estates of Coonoor |
We had a stop at “The Culinarium”
about 8km from Coonoor, to pack some delicious lunch. It was past 12.30pm when
we left from the restaurant.
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| The Culinarium restaurant on the Coonoor-Ooty Highway |
Unfortunately our
maps on Google had shown us a shortcut route, which later turned out to be a
nightmare. It took us through ketti, instead of the normal Ooty route and later
there were few roads closed due to heavy rains the previous week, we had to
take the Manjoor road, instead of going back to Ooty. We then crossed through
Baramula, Meekery, B. Manihatty and Palada to join the Ooty-Avalanche main
road. This route was at least 10km extra, which took us over 90mins extra
including time to reroute and verify with the locals.
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| Stunning views through the dicey roads near Manihatty |
After all the hustle and
bustle in finding out the route, we had the first glimpses of the Emerald Lake
by 2.45pm; we were thrilled but were also worried about reaching Avalanche
forest reserve by 3.00pm for the eco-tourism ride.
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| First glimpses of Emerald Lake |
The road condition
up-to emerald bazaar was good, but after taking the diversion towards Avalanche
forest reserve it went on going worse. The last 3km stretch was very much
isolated and terrifying, to add to this our GPS started to show wrong position,
also the road turned to be worst at this last stretch.
At 3.15pm we
spotted the forest office, and were so excited to have made it to this point,
although about 15mins late. The excitement didn’t last long as we came to know
from the range officer that there are no tourists to start the eco-tourism
ride. Utterly disappointed, we ended up having our packed lunch here, adding to
this rain started to pour heavily. To avoid the day ending at disappointment,
we decided to drive to the bridge at emerald lake-avalanche lake. Though the
route was showing up as 8km, but it took us about an hour, thanks to the heavy
downpour of rain, sick condition of the roads, and overheating of our 2X drive
car. We had to stop for some time middle of the jungle to avoid overheating.
We finally reached
the bridge at Avalanche Lake and Emerald Lake at 5.15 pm. The route was
deserted, and we were the lonely tourists here. The view of Avalanche Lake was
spellbinding with a slight drizzle and green grass covered around the lake,
giving a picturesque and serene view.
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| Serene and beautiful Avalanche Lake |
After a small walk around the Avalanche
Lake, and having spent some time around we started to ride beyond the bridge, in
search of a better view of the Emerald Lake. After about 20 mins ride we reached
some small settlement and stopped for a view of the Emerald Lake. This route
was also deserted and was of very bad road conditions, there were a lot of huge
trees got uprooted on this route. So we decided to take our way back to Ooty.
Luckily we were able to make it to Avalanche-Ooty main road before dark.
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| Emerald Lake |
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