Ooty Diaries - Bangalore to Ooty

A few years ago I saw this coffee table book that was on sale in a book store called 'Landmark'. Those were the days when there were these places called bookstores. Anyway the book was about 100 Wonders in India and I read it and have since been trying to improve my numbers in this senseless game - who knows who will come up with a different number next time. 

Anyway one thing that stayed in my mind was a tribal community called Toda near Ooty. Since I was heading to Bangalore to listen to my old (like in old) pals Def Leppard, I fantasised about taking a slow bus to Mysore, meet Dr Tenzin, then go further down to Ooty, check out the Todas, take another bus to Palghat and meet Hari for a beer and finally take a 3 hour bus ride to Kochi to meet Tharian and force him to have a beer if he's not in the mood for it which he isn't sometimes.

However my nephew Abhi was all game to join me on this trip and we decided to drive to Ooty and cut off the second half of the trip. So we set off nice and early, enjoying traffic free roads in Bangalore till we exited and chugged along on the Mysore road. Good conversation kept flowing, Abhi handling both driving and conversation, and we hit Mysore at about 11. Met my old (young) pal Tenzin, now a Tibetan doctor, who runs his own clinic. Tenzin took us to a breakfast joint where we ate some fabulous dosas and headed out.

Now to get to Ooty we must cross the Madhumalai tiger reserve and frequent signs of 'we are not responsible for attacks by wild animals' popped up. Anyway it was a beautiful ride through the forest.

 We passed through this long, long town called Gudalur which is at the foothills of Ooty and on the border of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, just after the Madhumalai reserve ends. And then we turned into the hills - some lovely tall trees centuries old perhaps, green tea gardens, deep valleys - until we found the Pykara falls which is where everyone says the jeep safari guys were.

Anyway, we walked to the way to the falls and found that it was a 350 mt walk to the falls from the main road. Most people did not do the walk and instead waited for the battery operated buggy. Not us. We walked, the air cool even at 130 pm, went down several steps to the waterfall which is a gentle, sloping one, maybe better during rains, walked up, stopped for a bite, a drink, got info from Mahesh shopkeeper where to find the Toda mund and went. He was very discouraging about the jeep safaris.

Anyway we went as directed to the film shooting hill which requires a ticket for you to climb up the hill where film shootings take place, enjoyed the view, spotted on Toda hut down below and went down to it. We headed out after taking a few pics, admiring the blue mountains in the background. 

Onwards to Ooty where we reached in the evening times after a couple of stops and checked into hotel. We stepped out to eat a snack, went back, found this lovely church of St Thomas right next to the hotel which had war graves. The church was from 1840s i think. 

We rested after a light dinner, having decided that the Toda temple behind the Botanical garden should be our place of visit tomorrow. Lovely drive, interesting journey, great music. Abhi played a group called Leisure which sounded good to me. I should explore that a bit.