Last Sunday (wow, a week ago!), we departed Chennai for a sub-vacation to Ooty. Ooty is known as a “Hill Station” and has at least in recent history been known as a vacation spot.
During the British occupation of India, if I understand correctly, the British were the ones who build the town up from a rural agrarian village to a tourist mecca, but I will try to steer clear of all political implications this has, and save that perhaps for another post.
We left Chennai and flew into Coimbatore, which even though still a fairly large city (my raised in the woods standards), was refreshing. Our flight put us in pretty late, so we stayed the night in Coimbatore. The next morning we hired a car and driver to take us into Ooty proper, and to do some sight seeing along the way. Coimbatore is pretty much at sea level, and Ooty is at approximately 2300 meters, and the road between is an amazingingly narrow, twisted, and lushly beautiful experience. Although in need of repair the road is very similar to those in the West of Ireland in their narrowness, and beautiful vistas. They also share the sheer drops with little to no guard rails!
Although this is an upward shot, it shows the stone guard rail that like those in Ireland.
On the Ooty Road.
Remarkable views and vistas are too many to count.
Along the way I amused both Geetha and our driver to no end by being amazed by seeing monkeys. They found my amazement at seeing these nifty creatures in the wild almost funny. From what I saw during my trip, these monkeys are almost treated the same way those of us in the North East treat Gray Squirrels… they’re just bigger with opposable thumbs! In fact I could almost imagine my mother, if she were still around, taking pot shots at them with her pellet gun as they pried open the top of her bird feeder… :-)
Of course she wouldn’t shoot at this family which we found perched on one of the stone guardrails
This post is turning into a novella, so I’ll breifly mention the two other stops we made on our way to Ooty, and start another post on what we did on our short visit there.
The next stop, which we owe entirely to our driver as there wasn’t really a sign you would have noticed for it was a Government run Horticultural park. Outside of Coimbatore there are numerous banana, cocounut and beetal nut plantations, and this park is dedicated to these and other indigenous species of plants. It was gorgeous to say the least and it was very interesting to see what spices like pepper and nutmeg and cloves looked like before they made it into those nifty little jars you buy at the megalomart… Another feature that really interested me was vast and complicated stone and concrete irrigation system (yeah I’m a geek). This system was entirely gravity fed, and was an amazing feat of engineering.
Just a pic of the park and a shot of an irrigation channel
Our next two stops were in Conoor, Dolphin Nose, and the Highfields Tea Factory.
Dolphin Nose is impossible to capture in either words or photos. It is perhaps one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. As it’s name describes it is simply a vista point sharply located on a cliff at the edge of a tea plantation. The views left me awestruck.
Two beautiful vistas in one shot!
There are many tea factories and plantations to visit in Conoor and Ooty, and all of them are rather interesting. I found them to be similar to the vinyards I had visited in that they are two “crops” that actually add something almost artistic to the surrounding landscape in their geometry and lushness. Here we learned how tea is harvested and processed for consumption, and most importantly sampled everything from a pure green tea to marsala tea to chocolate tea.
Fields of Tea, very similar to a vinyard
Tea being dried
Hard to believe this post just covered a 12 hour day! But what a day it was. If you’re interested all the pictures from the first day of our trip to Ooty can be found here.
The second day and a half of our trip were spent doing the touristy things within Ooty.