Coonoor (in Tamil Nadu’s northwest) is the second largest town in the Nilgiri Hills, which are part of India’s Western Ghats.
At 1,850 metres – more than 6,000 feet – this attractive town sits at a higher altitude than does any Australian settlement, ski villages included.
Coonoor was the one Western Ghats location where we stayed “in town”, I took the photo from the road in front of our hotel at 6.59 am on 02 March 2023.
Can you notice anything “dead wrong”, environmentally speaking?
The trees atop the ridge line – the ones silhouetted in the morning mist – ought look “very familiar” to any Australian eyes.
I suspect that the Western Ghats are now “host” to many more Tasmanian blue gums than is Tasmania!
The Nilgiri Hills’ high country and the separate but nor far-distant mountains near Munnar are/were global “hotspots” of extraordinary biodiversity, with their own unique “mosaic” of high altitude grasslands and forests.
The Nilgiri Hills have more than 2,800 flowering plant species.
Most of the aforementioned have been displaced by tall eucalypt monoculture, seemingly-endless tea plantations, also-introduced acacias, dams and assorted forms of “over-clearing”.
Climate change is, of course, also now a major problem.
Valiant efforts are being made to protect what remains and to restore/rewild/recover what has been degraded.
For an overview, click here.
This blog will give you a good visual/topographical sense of the Nilgiri Hills.
Future, multi-image Pelican Yoga posts will give you a “look at” human (and other) life in Coonoor.