Wine, Dine and Dance - Shruthi Stall!

My recent trip to Ootacamund and Conoor has left me with very little to say about the outside world. So, this handicap allows me to tell you about this tiny stall about 5kms from Dolphin’s nose in Conoor. If you have a vehicle of your own, the entire journey will be a 1-hour ordeal. You take the road that forks from the Sim’s park and at every step there will be a board guiding you through. We, on the other hand, decided to walk up. We were staying at the Blue Hills hotel in Conoor and it was about 16kms from there. The local authorities told us that there would be a bus at 6:45am, which we happened to miss. We assumed that the next bus that was 3 hours hence would pick us up on the way if we politely waved out. Alas!

Lesson learnt: Buses in Conoor DON’T stop! They just don’t!

We walked up. Tea everywhere, and not a drop to drink. After about 10kms we saw the Shruthi stall materializing amidst the mist. It was a tiny place that made tea and sold Tea, wholesale. The owner was there too at that time. We stood outside the stall looking down the hills. We were given binocular to aid vision. T’wasn’t must of a help, I should confess. After about 15 minutes of squinting, we realized that we were in desperate need of something hot to drink. We were invited cordially and asked for our choices in Tea. There was masala chai, earl green tea, lemon tea, chocolate tea, orange pekoe and what-not! We all made our pick and sipped on it, while the owner tried to sell some packets of it to us. We also got to know that the tea estate around the stall was owned by Mumtaz, the actress, who sadly, is dead. He also showed us an estate that belonged to a great Tamil actor, whose name I cannot recollect. But the tea definitely helped in the process of rejuvenation and we left to complete the next 6kms of the journey.

Shruthi stall – tea for one and all….