Plastic free Nilgiris!!

27 December 2008

Below is a picture of the dumping yard of Ooty. An area supposed to be green is filled with filth, a disgrace for the hill station and to ecologically sensitive Nilgiris biosphere.

In Ooty, I saw several boards mentioning that Nilgiris is a plastic free district. To be honest, it is true, though partly. People in the shops don’t give the items in plastic bags. The culprits seem to be the tourists who throng Ooty every year. Practically, it is not possible to check each person entering Ooty for plastics. And we all know that majority of the people visiting a hill station like Ooty do not have a basic understanding of keeping the environment clean. Naturally, dumping yard is full of plastics.


Readers may have some doubt on why I visited this dumping yard. The strange circumstances that day made me to stop and take snaps of this squalid place.

We had planned to visit restricted zones of Western Catchment area. Getting permits to visit those places was not easy, but Sankara managed to arrange for the same though his contacts. But there is a saying “Man proposes but God disposes”. The Jeep driver who was supposed to take us to Western Catchment arrived late and not wanting to waste time waiting for him, we made a quick trip to Avalanche and returned back!! When back in Ooty, Jeep driver was ready but he broke out the news that the road to Western Catchment had collapsed. His suggestion was to take our cars and head to Parson’s valley which offered some stunning views.

I do not know what standard the Jeep driver used when he told that the road to Parson’s valley was good for car. The road was hopeless that put a lot of strain on the car and the people inside it. Hoping to find better roads, we managed to travel for 7-8 km. It was then we got to see this garbage dumping place. The road went right into the dumping yard. The state of the road further was beyond our imagination. We decided to return back.

On a normal day, I would have just passed by the filth lamenting about the bad state of affairs of this country. But since the destiny did not allow reaching the destination of the day, I took few snaps of this “great” place, with one hand on the camera and other on my nose!!!!

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