Doddabetta
— — the shola forest going blue at the edges.
Not only on a wall.
“The roof of the Nilgiris, ten kilometres east of Ooty in Tamil Nadu. At 2,637 metres the road ends at a small observatory and a stand selling masala chai; on a clear morning the view runs out across the Coimbatore plain and back into Kerala. The shola woods on the slope hold their own weather — eucalyptus higher up, native shola lower, and tea estates green-stepping down toward Coonoor. The wind sounds older than the road. — from the studio
Doddabetta, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Doddabetta is the highest peak in the Nilgiri Hills, a range of the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu. The summit rises to 2,637 metres (8,652 feet), making it the tallest point in Tamil Nadu and one of the highest south of the Himalayas. The Kannada name translates loosely as 'big mountain'. The peak lies about ten kilometres east of Udhagamandalam, the hill town more commonly called Ooty, and falls inside the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, designated by UNESCO in 2000 as part of a wider mosaic that includes Bandipur, Mudumalai, and Silent Valley.
The slope holds two forests in one. Above roughly 2,200 metres, eucalyptus and silver oak plantations from the colonial period dominate; below, fragments of native shola — dense, stunted evergreen woods that grow in folds of the hill where the wind cannot reach — sit between rolling grasslands. The air at the summit averages 10 to 15 degrees Celsius even in May, dropping near freezing on December mornings. The southwest monsoon arrives in June; the northeast monsoon brings a second wet season in October and November. Clear long-distance views are most reliable in February, March, and April.
A paved road climbs from Ooty to within a short walk of the summit. The Tamil Nadu Tourism observatory at the top runs two telescopes and a small viewing platform open roughly from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, with a modest entry charge. The drive from Ooty takes about thirty minutes; the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, a UNESCO World Heritage line since 2005, reaches Ooty from Mettupalayam through Coonoor in a five-hour climb behind a steam locomotive. From the summit the view runs west into Kerala on clear days, with the Mukurthi range visible to the south.