Ooty

Date arrived: 28th January  2024

Date Departed: 31st January 2024 (1st Feb inc 1 night in Coimbatire)

Favourite sight: Botanic Gardens

Average Cost: £30.17 PPPD (£30.37 inc 1 night in Coimbatore)

Ooty, or Snooty Ooty as it was apparently known by the British - is a Hill Station in Tamil Nadu, now known as Udagamandalam.  Everyone calls it Ooty. It is home to one of India's handful of heritage Toy Trains, which we had secured tickets to ride. Let's be honest, we were here for the train - but Ooty had lots to love.

28th January 2024

There are three ways to get to Ooty - train, bus and car - and as we had secured train tickets to go down the hill, this meant we were going up on the bus! We managed to find the bus okay in Mysore's state bus station, and it was quite a comfortable one with air conditioning and big reclining seats.

The road up to Ooty is steep and windy, ascending some 2000M into the hills of Tamil Nadu before eventually reaching Ooty's surprisingly busy bus station. Ooty has boards at a number of strategic locations publishing auto rickshaw prices to travel to otheer key landmarks, but we still had to haggle with the tuk-tuk driver to get anywhere hear the price on the board! We did manage to reach our accommodation at The Colonel's Inn homestay, which was... strange. It was a big rambling house with massive rooms, and even a pool table on the landing outside our room, but came with quite a cool reception - however there was a comfy bed and a working shower, so we were happy enough.

After settling in we rambled a short distance down to the Modern Stores / Moddy's Coffee Shop that we had spotted on the way up the hill. A bit like a local version of Bettys, selling cakes, chocolate, fudge, and amazing hot chocolate, it was really busy on this Sunday afternoon. While ordeing a hot chocolate treat, we spotted that they also do Churros with the Hot Chocolate, which was amazing! The drink was so thick it was almost like the chocolate dip traditionally served with the long Mexican donuts, so we really enjoyed this little snack. 

As the afternoon drew to a close and evening descended, the temperature dropped quite a bit necessitating the wearing of an actual coat to go out for dinner! Whilst chilly, this was actually quite a pleasant change from the 30+ degrees celsius we'd been enjoying for the last few weeks, and we quite enjoyed walking to and from our chosen restaurant - even if the streets of downtown Ooty were a little on the crazy side.

29th January

After a simple breakfast of omelette and toast at the hotel, we took a quick walk through town to the nearest cash machine, before seeking out the Ooty tourist information office. The team here were very helpful in our quest for a reasonable hike we could do directly from the town, recommending we visit the Doddabetta peak some 6KM away. They then asked us to update a register with our details and our request, before putting on their official hats and requesting selfies with us!

We then made our way to the Government Botanic Gardens, a few hundred metres from our homestay. THesee were seriously impressive, with multiple areas including a Megalawn (TM), Italian Gardens, and various greenhouses and other themed areas across the large site. We spent a really nice couple of hours here, and it was even possible to get away from most of the other visitors for a bit, up into the higher reaches of the gardens.

Post batanic gardens we made what would become our daily visit to Moddy's Coffee Shop, where we had lunch and lattes.

We spent the afternoon walking to the far side of Ooty to find the lake and boathouse, with promised entertainment of Pedalos and a small train ride around the lake. The walk was fairly challenging, as Ooty's downtown is very much a working town, and does not have any of Mysore's niceties - such as pavements - but we did get to the lake all right after an hour or so.

The Boathouse was a fairly impressive establishment, with multiple rides, a haunted house, arcades, cafes, and - of course - a boat house, from which we could rent a pedalo for half an hour.

Ow! it turns out pedalos are not made for adults with long legs, and the process of pedalling them up and down Ooty's artificial lake is particularly painful on your quads! We had fun though, and managed to explore quite a lot of the lake before heading back in, and then taking a brief ride on the little train.

After getting a tuk-tuk back to the hotel (they are fine with the published prices once you get away from transport hubs) we took a walk out to a restaurant for dinner. It was second time lucky tonight, as the first restaurant we tried, in a hotel, appeared to be closed down - although the Hotel staf let us wander around four floors of hotel first before telling us this. The second restaurant we tried was open, and we managed an excellent dinner before making our way back to the Colonel's Inn.

30th January

Today we set out on a hike from Ooty to Dodabetta, which it turns out is the second highest point in southern India. Using a combination of Google Maps and Maps.me, we plotted a route and enjoyed walking on some quiet roads south of the town, before having quite a steep scramble up a forested hillside to get to the road to the peak.

Calling it a peak is reasonably ambitious, as at 2,670M it's only 500M above the town itself, and there is a well paved road up to the top, making it quite a popular destination with visitors. In fact there's a telescope equipped observation platform at the top, although the telescopes were unavailable when we got there. Our route worked pretty well, but the trail disappeared for the last 30M or so up to the road, causing a bit of scrambling and inertial navigation - but we got there. 

Views on the way to and from the top of Dodabetta peak

After a well earned pause to get some lunch (big plates of fried rice and noodles, for a pound each) we set off back, returning along the main road to avoid the scrambling, and for a change of scenery. We also stopped at a tea museum on the way back, which had a really good exhibition on the history of tea, and a much better demonstration of tea processing than we saw in Munnar. We also got a much welcome cuppa to enjoy :-)

On getting back to Ooty after our 16KM hike, we obviously went to Moddy's coffee shop for hot chocolate, churros, and a latte!

31st January

The main purpose in visiting Ooty was to travel on the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, a narrow guage heritage railway that connects the town to the rest of India's railway network. With the downward journey booked for 2PM, we hhad some time to kill so returned to the botanical garden for a couple of hours. From here, we paid one last visit to Moddy's coffee shop before collecting our luggage ant taking a tuk-tuk to the station.

There are a few of these Toy Trains, as they are known, still operating in india, but our options for riding them have been rapidly diminishing as, it turns out, they are all in the middle of nowhere. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railroad is about 16 hours north of Kolkata and very cold while we are here, and the Kolka-Shimla railway is slightly nearer our route, but due to timings came down to a choice between that and Dharamshala as the last point on our journey. As we were able to ride the Ooty railway, we chose Dharamshala - and hopefully will get there, although it's a bit tight in the planning.

The NMR has very simple carriages, each comprising 4 compartments with 2 x 4 person benches facing each other. Knee-room and luggage space are both at a premium, and whilst we had booked seats on one of the 1st class carriages, this just got us a padded bench instead of a wooden slab!

The route descends through 2000M in around 40KM, and has some pretty steep gradients at times. In fact the engine that pushes the train up has a special toothed wheel that meshes with an extra central track to ensure traction. To give perspective, the uphill journey takes 5 1/2 hours, complared to 3 1/2 for the return.

The scenery of the Nilgiri Mountains is stunning however, with huge vistas and narrow gorges all the way down, and we managed to get a couple of piccies whilst leaning out the windows of the carriage!

Stunning views from the Ooty Highlands Railway

The heritage locomotive and carriages (left) and

Looking back up into the mountains from the end of the line at Mettupalayam (right)

The Nilgiri Mountain Railway ends at the small town of Mettupalayam, from where there are a few connecting rail services, however the easiest way for us to proceed was to get a bus to the nearby city of Coimbature. Picking up the bus from Mettupalayam's well organised bus station, a few hundred metres from the railway station, was straightforward, and we were underway once more within 30 minutes of leaving the train.

Coimbature

We arrived in Coimbature after dark, following a 2 hour bus journey from Mettupalayam, and found ourselves at a city centre bus station a couple of kilometre's away from our hotel. This had been picked for proximity to the train station, ahead of tomorrow's long journey back up the coast, and was reached quickly with a short tuk-tuk ride. 

We checked in to a reasonably nice hotel, had some dinner in the adjoining (surprisingly good) restaurant, and hit the sack ahead of another 05:00 alarm clock!

1st February

We never enjoy getting up particularly early, and this was no exception, but it was very convenient walking all of 100M to Coimbatore's big and busy train station. We managed to find Poha and Chai on the platform as we boarded the first of our two trains for today - this one a 7 hour journey to Managalore.

...And it was straightforward, arriving a little late, but in plenty of time for us to enjoy a 90p Thali at Mangalore station before catching out onward connection to Gokarna.