Tamil Nadu
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The forest is gone but the embroidery lives on
I walk barefoot on the rolling grassland. A little ahead, rising from the velvety grass, is an oval shaped bamboo hut. Thatched by dried grass, the hut has no window and just a tiny door for people to crawl in. By the fence that surrounds the hut, an old frail woman wrapped in a remarkable woolen shawl gives me a toothless grin. I am in a hamlet unmarked on Google Maps in the Nilgiri district of Tamil Nadu. Here live the Todas, a tribe indigenous to the Nilgiri mountains. The Toda women are custodians of the unique embroidery called Pukhoor, G.I tagged since 2013. Before the British arrived in the…
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Ooty, Coonoor, Kotagiri itinerary for 5 days
Ooty or Udagamandalam (2240 metres) is a popular hill station in Nilgiri district in Tamil Nadu state of India. Around 20 kilometres south-east of Ooty is Coonoor(1850 metres). Kotagiri(1950 metres) is to the east of Ooty and to the north-east of Coonoor. Essentially, these three places form a triangle. You can visit this area completely while stationing yourself in Ooty, however, this itinerary will cover night stays at all these hill-stations. The Nilgiri district is named after the Nilgiri mountain range that exists here. Most of these places are parts of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Nilgiris used to be a densely forested…
