The Ooty Diaries - Toda Temple

It wasn't very cold in Ooty and we got going to the Botanical Gardens through which you climb up to the top and find the Toda temple. 

We parked outside the Botanical Gardens and went in. It's lush green, filled with beautiful trees, flowers, quaint buildings of the European era, glass houses and so on. We followed the signs that said Toda mund and walked up and up and up. 

The Botanical Gardens creeps up the hill and is at many levels. At the first level we passed and entry to the Raj Bhavan with not a guard in sight.

 Climbed higher until we reached an exit gate, walked right on the path until we found another sign and then stepped into a Toda area where they now have a stall that sells their produce. A little ahead was the temple. 

K

Some Todas who were sitting there guided us and told us to see from the outside and not go inside. The temple was a fascinating structure with a low door, many signs and symbols etc. There were a few buffaloes around - an animal that's sacred to the Todas.

We climbed back down, admiring the landscape, stopped at the glass houses, and made our way back. Breakfast at the hotel and then I set off for a walk towards the Ooty lake while Abhi got down to some work.

 It was a nice walk with the scent of eucalyptus trees. On the way back i stopped at this place called Thunder World which had a museum of antique cameras. And some other stuff. 

We checked out and set off to the Rose garden. But then we decided against and turned towards Mysore.

The drive was beautiful again and we had Pink Floyd playing from Division Bell, an album i listened to a lot when i travelled from Mumbai to Pune in the 90s. At some point we hit Gudalur, stopped by to see an amazing house, and then headed out to Mysore.

Another beautiful drive through the Madhumalai forests where we saw some deer flocking around. A peaceful drive into Mysore, stop at Sapa cafe where we got some lunch and met Abhishek's friends Nidhi and Shreyas. Post lunch we went for a walk at the Kakkurahalle lake, a nice 5 km walk that ended with a beautiful sunset. Shreyas told me that the lake was infested with crocodiles.

From there to their house for a cup of coffee and we set off at 8 pm to Bangalore. Back home after a spot of dinner at 1230.

Lovely two days.