 The Stanmore bungalow is a sprawling 7500 square feet British built bungalow located in Valparai, a plantation town on the fringes of the Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary. It has 3 large bedrooms, dressing rooms, modern toilets and boasts of fireplaces in all rooms. A verandah surrounds the entire bungalow and green lawns lie spread across the open courtyard like a proverbial carpet.
A quintessential British bungalow, it is also home to Malabar Giant squirrels and the occasional barking deer making its way across the lawn, heading for the vegetable garden behind the bungalow.
Its’ palatial. Its’ regal. For once you feel transported to a different era in time, a feeling of being an English Sahib. The white suited butler, the fireplace and the sprawling verandah with an expansive well maintained lawn and garden, finish the `awe-some’ picture.
As time passes, the animals come into view perhaps across the stream below or on a jeep ride across the vast plantation expanse and your idea of the place gets altered. You begin to look all the time for that barking deer that walked across the lawn on a misty morning, the Giant Squirrel that shifted home only a week back or the permanent residents, the Lion Tailed Macaques and Hornbills, which visit your area once in a while. Alive each moment for that elusive mammal or bird, you play planter and visit perhaps the best maintained tea factory in Southern India located above a catchment lake. Then the news arrives from nowhere about a herd of elephants across a bio diversity zone a few 100 meters away and then you understand the uniqueness of the holiday, being within in the comfort of a tea plantation yet surprised by the sight of a grazing herd of elephants just below the last tea hill. |
