Ootacamund

I had been to Ooty 7 years back when my father, who is an avid traveller, took us for Southern India-darshan. Hate to say it but it was a horrible experience that time around. While in Mysore we got our seats reserved, hopped onto the bus, landed in Ooty, only to find no hotel rooms available I remember it must’ve been around 9 and i was running down the streets to find a decent accommodation. Finally we got a single room, in some Pavithra Lodge if I remember that correctly. It was the most shabbiest room I had ever seen till date. We went to book the bus tickets, to go back to Mysore the very next day. Destiny had other plans. The travel operator asked us “Didn’t you like Ooty?” and he got a piece of our minds There was another gentleman sitting in one corner, little did we know he was an official with the Tourism department. When he heard all this, he picked up the phone and said “My guests are on the way to your hotel, and I don’t wanna hear there are no rooms!!” Then he calmly turned at us and said “I have booked a room at Hotel Monarch for 1/3rd the price and you can stay there. And by the way, it’s Mithun’s hotel”. And the gentleman’s name was St. Patrick. The room felt like a hot water bath on a cold Sunday. It was amazing. From then onwards it was local site-seeing and stuff.

Most of us know that if you go to the same place once with family and once with friends you are gonna come back with a totally different experiences.

I am a software engineer working in Bangalore, which means life is dull and boring. If you are wondering what happened next you need to read the title again yupp Ooty it was again. The gang was decided, it was going to be me, Ankush, his better half Suchi, Prit and Shweta. Ankush agreed to take his love along…. no not Suchi but his Maruti Swift VDi and it did make our trip a whole lot inexpensive. We put our googling skills to the test and found out some decent places where we could stay, but it was season time and all the places were full. And my past experience taught me not be adventurous, as we had females along too. Finally after a lot of trying we got booking for that very weekend in Hotel Charring cross. The rooms weren’t exactly top of the charts, but not that bad too. We hardly cared as we just had to sleep for one night. It was the journey that I found was the most beautiful.

We started early morning at 4 am, but we are new to Bangalore, so hardly knew our way out. Plus there aren’t exactly a lot of people at that time to tell the way. And when we found one he didn’t know Hindi It took us one whole hour to get out of the city and touch the outer ring road. Stopped at a tea stall for morning tea, after by-passing Mysore, and stopped again just before Bandipur national park for brekfast. The only thing the road side restraunt had was parotas. Luckily we had instant noodles and the restro owner gave us boiling hot water, at a charge of course. Road is fairly decent till you cross Bandipur national park. After that there is a rough stretch of around 5-8 kms where there is no road at all. You virtually swerve and decide which pot hole to hit which is the least deep. Bandipur begins the foothills of the Niligiri mountains which go on to touch Ooty, through the famed 36 hairpin bends. Mind you the climbing part is the easier one actually. The brakes of our car got heated up and you could smell fresh rubber fumes even when you were sitting at the back seat.

Alas we were in Ooty, checked in to our rooms and just then, the rain god turned extra mischevious. It rained twice that day. So going and checking out any local places was outta question. In the hotel we stayed a painter had put on his exhibition, so we killed time by watching those. At first I was thinking what the heck am I doing looking at brush strokes which dont even make any sense to me. And then when I looked at the price of each painting I was flabbergasted, 40k to 60k a piece. But the next day I happened to meet the painter himself Mr Ilyas, and he came across a real genleman. Took time to call us and explain the motive and his thoughts behind each of his creations.

In the evening when the rain settled a bit we went out to see the Ooty lake. Now i have seen this lake before also, and in my previous stay in Chandigarh, I have seen and done boating at Sukhna lake too (a famous picnic spot there). So here I am thinking that this might be a really boring thing to do. And when I saw the queue my head went for an off spin. But then they say things aren’t always as they seem. The whole thing was so enjoyable with friends, we had loads of fun. We went for boating, then took a ride in the mini toy train. Ohh and dont miss the home made chocolates you get in Ooty. There are so many shops selling those, I wonder how many of them are acually home made Went for the restro-bar which was just under our hotel. It had a mini dance floor and a live DJ too. So it was good fun.

Next day we kept on sleeping late. It was as if the body clock was doing a perfectly normal thing, to sleep late on a Sunday at last we went to Dodabetta peak, again it was not the destination but the journey. Then we went on to see Conoor. The place is not as commercialised as Ooty. My advice, if you are going to Ooty, then better get a room in Conoor, its hardly 20 kms away from Ooty. And the way is fantabulous. But I think the rain god was still in his sneakers and wanted to play some more. We actually couldnt even get our feet out to touch Conoor. It was raining so bad. Dropped the idea, came back to Ooty, had lunch at a Punjabi dhaba bang opposite to the Ooty lake. Started our way back at around 3:30, but had to take lottsa breaks in between cuz the brakes were getting heated up way too much. The best part was when we were to start the downwards journey through the hairpin bends, the cop asked us to stop and take special permission from their sahab. This guy comes up and tells us that there have been a lots of accidents lately. So we are driving at our own risk and advised us to go at 1st or 2nd gear only. Turned out the chap’s advise was actually correct. Luckily we didnt find that much traffic as we had expected so even after around 6-7 breaks which summed upto a total of 1 to 1 and a half hour easily, we made it back to bangalore in less than 6 hours.

More than anything the trip made us realize, things arent so boring and dull after all. If you have good company the place hardly matters….

(I wrote a blog after a long time…. and forwarded the link to Ankush to see, he too had scribbled his memoirs but was too lazy to put publish ‘em. Here is his version http://ankushs.blogspot.com)