Ooty

To get to Ooty, whose real name is the rather more difficult to pronounce Udhagamandalam, we had to take a bus across from Mysore in Karnataka to Tamil Nadu state. The hotel that we were staying in provided a private service, and for some reason we thought that this might be a better option than the state bus company, who's creaking windowless rust buckets looked like they should have been scrapped years ago. Sadly when our private option turned up, it had some of the smallest seats we had come across since our 25-people-in-a-mini-van experiences of Guatemala.

Ooty is South India's most famous hill station. It was set up by the British in the early 19th century when the summer heat got too much for the then-Madras based government, and was was swiftly nicknamed Snooty-Ooty. It is nestled in the beautiful Nilgiri hills and sits at an altitude of 2400m. Our private bus would in theory cut the journey time down from five and a half to four hours by travelling through the Mudumalai National Park before the mahoosively steep climb up the twenty six hairpin bends of the Sighur Ghat road. In practice, the (very) mini-bus stopped for meals twice and once at a tourist tea plantation as well as asking us to fork out another one hundred rupees for the national park entrance fee, so with hindsight the state bus might have been the less complicated option.

Eventually we reached the bus station in Ooty. It was quite stunningly cold, somewhere around the fourteen degree mark in the middle of the sunny day, and although we we had read that it was going to be cold, the actual temperature came as quite a surprise. I had been pretty much sweating my man-boobs off since the day we left Auckland over two months ago, so for me it was a real pleasure. Although she no doubt appreciated not being drenched in my dripping embraces, Clairy wasn't quite so keen on this sudden change.

With only a few rather rubbish suggestions from lonely planet, we left it up to a cheerful rickshaw driver to show us a few hotels around the town, and amazingly, the second one that he took us to was absolutely spot on. The room at the Silver Oaks was brand new, bright and clean, and although as the sun went down it proved to be bloody freezing, there was a nice thick fleecy blanket provided on the bed to keep us cosy at night. The attached restaurant also turned out to be top notch.

We wandered around town and Clairy snapped some nice pics.


More rangoli (I keep trying to call it tapioca for some reason) with lotus flower motifs.


Oh hi. This lady seemed to find the plastic bins themselves far tastier than the edible foodstuffs contained within. Judging by the state of the bins, this was a regular lunch time attraction.


Another patented Clairy 'supreme grottmaster' photo.


We strolled up to the botanical gardens, not expecting too much after the slightly disappointing ones in Bengaluru, only to find they were totally immaculate and really quite lovely.


They were being tended by an army of busy people. There was a huge array of new planting going on, all being carefully covered with broom to protected it from the intense midday sun.


The map of India, was nicely planted with succulents.


We watched this tiny heron busily poking around in a waterlogged section of lawn.


On the way out was this gorgeous little potting house.


Another quality pic from Clairy entitled - 'Where goats come to die'. Even if I fancied a tasty bit of goaty-peg, I would make an effort to find somewhere a little nicer than this rancid dungeon nightmare.


Love this guy's tiny shop. He was constantly hammering away with his sewing machine when we walked past.


The following day we felt we had to check out the boating lake.


We got some really funny looks for choosing an actual rowing boat rather than the quite frankly ruined looking pedalos. I couldn't help chuckling at the odd groups of four middle-aged blokes pedalling round in circles out on the lake.


We took off until we were right at the far end, miles away from the nervous looking Indians in pedalos. Then we reached the section that unfortunately must have been been somehow connected to the town's ageing sewerage system. I swiftly paddled back being extra careful not to splash the gorgeous looking lady.


There was a rather tragic 'fun' park attached to the boating lake, filled with rusting classics like the one below.


The old pedalos were much more attractive.


The great boating accident of '78.


Look at that beauty.


Sugar can juice! Made from sugar cane though.


We found a decomposing heap of the old pedalos, and Clairy took this surprisingly lovely piccy.


Up above the boating lake was possibly one of the most bizarre attractions we had yet come across. There was absolutely no way that it could possibly live up to the claims of the signs that were posted outside. I had to note one down as it was too amazing to not be repeated. It boldly claimed: 'As an artistic creation par excellence that challenges the human imagination, it uniquely occupies the position of a miracle in this era'...blimey. In fact it was one of the most astonishingly underwhelming pieces of work either of us had ever encountered, particularly if we were to believe the amount of work that had apparently gone into it.

An artist from Kerala called Anthony Joseph had come up with the idea of creating 'plant-like' pieces by wrapping different coloured threads round and around bits of cardboard. He then trained fifty (unfortunate) women in this technique. Apparently they worked non-stop (though possibly not counting a bit of sleeping and eating here and there) for twelve years to create the garden we saw before us. Twelve years! They must have all gone insane, and the end result was just so sad, all the plants were tiny, and were pretty much all identical apart from a few different coloured leaves and flowers.


We were both speechless...but definitely not for the reason the artist would have liked. Run awaaaaaaaaaaay!


Our rickshaw driver took pity on us after seeing our crazed far away expressions upon leaving the thread garden, and got us back to the hotel quickly. He even let Clairy take a picture of the attractive hand-painted eyes on the front of his machine. He also let me honk his clown-style brass horn, HONK-HONK...which drew lots of strange looks from the staff of our hotel.


On our final day in Ooty we caught a public bus out to the Tribal Research Centre Museum. The bus dropped us off at a village nearby and we had a pleasant 2km walk through the quiet farmland.


The museum itself was as random as we expected. There was a small amount of really quite interesting information on the hugely different hill-tribes that have inhabited the rural areas of Tamil Nadu and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the past. We sadly weren't allowed to take any photos inside, but Clairy enjoyed looking at the different styles of pottery, and the slightly simplified models of the tribes' houses. Upstairs though there was a fine set of photographs of tribal life that we enjoyed browsing.


A huge amount of irrigation is need in the dry season to keep the agriculture going.


Waiting for the bus back to town in the village of M Palada.


The first bus that came to take us back was totally rammed with not one inch of space for us to squeeze on. The second was the same though, so we pushed as hard as we could and squeezed on in. For the rest of the journey Clairy had a chap falling asleep on her arm and scratching her shoulder with his stubbly beard, while I had a grumpy old lady constantly jabbing me in the back in a vain, yet persistent attempt to make me move into a space that just didn't exist.

Back in town, Clairy got this great pic of one of the decorated trucks that own the roads around here. You'd better get out the way for the Ooty Vegetable Express!