The stay at the estate turned out to be a great experience, especially given that we were three families with 3 toddlers and had booked a complete bungalow for ourselves, and the service provided was amazing
BHPian ninjatalli recently shared this with other enthusiasts:
It’s been a while, and the car needed some additional work. The Michelin Primary tires still had groove depth, but we were in the 5th year, and this was getting into risky territory. So I decided to get them changed, given we had a weekend trip coming up. Looked up options, and I primarily came down to two options
1. MRF Perfinza
2. Continental UC6
3. CEAT Securadrive
Checked up reviews on the S-Cross group, and the feedback was decent for the first 30k kms (especially on wet roads and Bangalore craters), and some had even availed the warranty provided by CEAT. The range I knew I wasn’t going to reach for many years easily. So, I decided to go with that and got fresh Q2 2025 stock from the shop (Cherry Tyre Park in Yeshwanthpur).
The next update was on a long weekend trip to Kadmane Tea estate in Sakhleshpur. This was a good, long test run for the new tires, and they did perform well. Need to do more trips to understand if this was just my head or if the tires have actually made a difference.
Also, we had booked all meals; that was a fantastic decision as the food options were amazing, and the folks were very accommodating to the food requests for three toddlers with varying requirements.
As for the accommodations, I can’t do more justice than the OP of this thread, so I won’t repeat with those. A few general pictures of our experience.
The new bungalow that we stayed at
The bungalow had ample space; something my 2+ old toddler greatly leveraged
Abundance of tea gardens all around us…
…in all directions…
Saw some amazing insects that were so well camouflaged and made for this environment
From a sightseeing standpoint, prior to this trip, I had looked up this thread (and others) prior to our long weekend trip. I erroneously got the idea from the pictures that the huge estate offered plenty of places to go around. However, while we did enjoy our 2.5-day stay over there, we did a mix of estate jeeps and jogging (I went running alone on both days on my own over the trails across the estate), I must say the estate guys do a poor job of leveraging the natural beauty beyond the immediate tea estates.
Prior to our trip, I was imagining an abundance of trails and places to go with the right vehicle, but they seem to limit it to only two locations, which I see in the above thread, too.
1. There’s a trail that leads to a small stream for families/groups to play; this includes about 30-40 mins of off-road trail driving. We can either do it on our 4×4 vehicles or leverage the 4×4 offered by the estate for an additional charge.
2. There’s a nice viewpoint towards one end of the estate that has about 5 mins of off-road trail driving at the end. Technically, we can take normal cars and walk the last 5 minutes of the trail. I ironically ran/jogged to this same point earlier on my own without realizing we would be coming again later with the family. This view had a fantastic waterfall right at the base of the hilltop we were standing on; something that seemed easy to do.
I enquired the jeep driver about doing more extended trails, like the waterfall seen at the bottom of the viewpoint, but he said they don’t take customers to this place (but mentioned they themselves do go there to fish etc.). The only thing available on the table was a visit to the factory. I actually did a lot more running around on my own.
A last group pic amidst the tea gardens
Overall, a great place, but there’s a lot more potential I would say. Unfortunately, the estate is losing its labor as the locals are moving to greener pastures for a better life; so I think this tourism avenue could be explored a bit more. The host did mention they do longer treks from a different end of the estate, but apparently, that’s just a half-day trek. I probably will be visiting again with family in the coming years (I think it’s a great place to get older folks).
____
Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.
