the board that greeted us at the end of our 200kmodd journey from the heart of bengaluru said school estate but that wasnt our final destination is what we realised soon that would be school thota a division of school estate and a few hundred metres into the estate we saw a smaller board directing us to itthota roughly translates to garden in the local kannada language of course like many other places around india there is a local language not dialect just for coorg too there are many further distinctions and groups within locals here such as kodavas to which the family that owns school thota belongs surely there are many equally beautiful plantations and homestays in coorg but what caught our fancy on this particular drive of volkswagens impressive new taigun is the story of a german reverend who is associated with the early history of this place including the reason why it ended up being called school estate georg richter was the principal of a local mercara high school he was instrumental in mobilising local leaders in the field of education under his guidance they came together and collected money to purchase around 350 acres of land for rs 3000 back a princely sum back in the 1860s the aim was to fund the school with yield from the coffee and other plantations hence the name school estate since richter was in charge the house on the property also was built to his liking while earlier it was only a makeshift place for the occasional visitors the subsequent owners kept the core structure intact and built a seemingly europeanstyle indian home first for themselves and now extended to guests interested in soaking in nature and school thotas heritagecongratulationsyou have successfully cast your votelogin to view resultcoorg is one of the places that still rely on roads for its connections the drive from bengaluru to its centre madikeri is a mix of chocobloc metropolitan roads followed by a busy but reasonably fast mysore highway that you leave after srirangapatna for a more picturesque country road interspersed with short stretches of busy towns it was a mix that helped the versatility of the taigun shine through volkswagen offers this madeforindia suv in two engine and three gearbox options while we took what was on paper the smaller 10litre tsi 114bhp178nm coupled with a sixspeed torque converter gearbox revealed the variety of traffic and road conditions one of the biggest clichs busted was it doesnt tire under relentless highway driving a frugal fuel consumption figure meant we could do the entire stretch without a fuel stop en route coorg roads are typically narrow and twisty and the agile taigun seemed up for some confident driving patches of bad roads were dealt with ease as the taigun feels planted on the move just like its bigger stablemates the solid german connection is there to seeinside school thota we had many glimpses of the european connection too its current owners