The Infy Travelogues - III

 

• Ooty, Tamil Nadu

If Wayanad was one place we hadn’t even heard of, then Ooty was the ‘hot’ spot in our itinerary! Synonymous to Mahabaleshwar of Maharashtra, Udhagmandalam was a drastic difference to Udupi, Mangalore, Coorg and Wayanad both, in terms of visitors and the weather.  

                         

Ooty is a 4-5 hrs journey from Mysore with many spots to visit en route. The first one you come across is the Bandipur National Park. The unique thing we found about this place was that the road to Ooty goes through the forest providing you sights of animals in their natural habitat.

 

You can even spot deer at the side of the road or worse even, encounter an elephant smack in the middle of the road! 

                 

(Note: Zoom not used)

We found ourselves quite lucky with our Cab driver who could have possibly spotted even a chameleon there, with the way he was pointing to wild animals he could see deep inside the forest while driving. The Safari, for some reasons was closed that day. Just our luck! 

Further down the forest, we could see Ooty at an altitude of 7500 ft (approx 2650 m). Now, we’d heard of this picturesque road leading up to Ooty as much as Ooty itself, if not less. Full of zig-zags and hair-pin blinds, it makes you feel dizzy after a while.

                   

(Note: The no. of hair-pin bends to reach the top to Ooty on the yellow board – 36)

But again, the sight as you climb up is just too good to miss – hills full of tea gardens, tress seemingly with their roots at the foothills growing tall and you passing through water-filled clouds. The heavy chill in the air was clearly evident when everybody of us started resorting to our sweatshirts and jackets.

Though we came across many tourist spots on the way (which have been made famous and commercialized by many a Bollywood film shoots), the one which caught our heart was the Needle point. The moment you start walking towards it, you come across land full of Lemon grass (Gavti Chaha in Marathi). Never had I seen it in so much abundance. We were even lucky enough to see this spectacle in the sky, which wasn’t a rainbow, but one very difficult to describe (check out the pic). If that wasn’t enough, the rest of the way to Ooty was full of Nilgiri tress and the smell emanating from them (I love it!) 

 

 

No sooner did we reach the hill-station than we realized that   we were going to have a hard time dodging hoards of people and the resulting traffic. After dropping our luggage in our hotel room, we headed directly for lunch. Lunch was a different affair in itself; imagine having 12 bowls of dals, vegetables, sweet and a heap of rice to go with it :-O To add to the ‘fun’ the restaurant was blaring music with the diners’ chatter for accompaniment. All-in-all a repulsive atmosphere.  

 

In all this chaos inside, we didn’t realize that it had started to pour down outside. This led the road to the Doddabetta peak (highest in South India) being blocked for safety reasons. Damn! Now, Ooty is famous for some home-made chocolates. Applying the old trick of trying out different chocolates before buying, thereby satisfying your chocolate-appetite was childish. And, we did it :-P

                     

By that time, Ooty was biting cold with heavy rains to ensure that we’d to stay indoors for the remaining part of the day.  

Then the part which lifted the night to a new high, both literally and figuratively! Owing to the unbearable chill in the air, we emulated one thing the Russians do in such conditions… samajhdaaron ko ishara khafi hain ;-)

With no after-effects of the previous night, we got ready for the toy-train ride to the town of Coonnor. Apart from seeing Rajesh Khanna woo Sharmila Tagore by singing Mere Sapnon Ki Rani in Aradhana and of course SRK’s train-top Chhaiya Chhaiya we were not really accustomed to a toy-train. Though the joy was short-lived with people being crammed into every bogie of it – thank the peanuts-for-tickets for that. About the technicalities this one runs on a narrow gauge rather than a meter/broad gauge. Throughout the 1 hour journey from Ooty to Connor you get to see plenty of evidences of Ooty being a favourite with the British with station names like Wellington and Lovedale.

By the time we reached Coonnor our cab-driver was already there ready to drive us to the place which Connoor is famous for – Tea plantations. These plantations were accompanied by tea factories where they guided us through the process of how tea powder is obtained from the leaves.

After lunch - which was far better than what we the previous day (unique menu cards were a treat in all the places we went so far. Just check this one for it's menu titles and its thickness!), having visited all the main spots we decided on heading back to base and spending our last Sunday there… YES,  last Sunday in Mysore!

This brings an end to the Infy Travelogues and the life outside the boundaries of the campus. Will try to give a glimpse of our ‘Life inside the Campus’ in the following blog posts… Till the time being feel free to comment on all the Travelogues (3 parts), and of course if you want a ‘travel guide’ for the above tours, you know whom to contact ;-)

The Infy Travelogues - II

 

• Wayanad, Kerala

Out of all the places I visited, Wayanad in Kerala was the only place of which I hadn’t even heard before. I’d like to thank the Infy Travel Desk for suggesting it. The mention of Kerala and people presume that this place must be far off from Mysore but one more look at the Map of India will show that Wayanad is right near the Northern border of Kerala with Karnataka and just a 3 hours drive from Mysore.

Kerala and you can start imagining tea plantations spanning acres, coconut trees, backwaters, churches and educated locals. Yes, attributing the last to the fact that Kerala has 100% literacy! (But as my Facebook status went that day, I was surprisingly unable to spot a school till the time we were about to head back to Mysore :-O). The two things which intrigued me were the no. of Muslims in Wayanad (I always was under the impression that Kerala is full of only Mallus and Catholics) and that they have beef even for breakfast! Couldn’t somehow digest the latter.

The first place which were supposed to visit according to plan chalked-out were the Eddakkal Caves. Considering the efforts needed to reach these caves - which are at a height – dodging throngs of non-cooperative visitors, the result wasn’t really fruitful for me; couldn’t understand the engravings in the grotto and to my plight couldn’t find any explanation there.

The disappointment at the caves was washed off by this one-of-its-kind menu card at the restaurant where we’d lunch (I assume most of you have already seen this uploaded on Facebook).  But make no mistake, the fish it served was again very tasty! Yes, we’d vowed that we won’t have anything other than sea-food on all these outings.

We spent the evening relaxing at Pookat lake which is confined within a dense forest – pedal boating and walking across the path around the lake, buying pure honey and tea-powder.

                      

 

After some rest and a good night’s sleep which were pre-requisites to the day’s task, we’d a typical Kerali breakfast of Appam and a couple of more food items before we drove off to the big one – Meenmutty Falls. The unique thing about these falls is that you need to trek DOWN a fair height to reach them. And is the trek full of adventure! So much so that there are Forest guards and ropes to assist you during the arduous task! The deep valley visible from the corner of my eye where one wrong foot and…  even made me wonder if warming my bed back in Mysore would’ve been a better option :-O

             

Slowly but steadily we amateur trekkers finally reached the… bottom (Yeah, I know, we are so used to saying summit). The thunderous roar of the falls made us forget what we’d been through to reach it, in a jiffy; let the pics describe it for you…

          

The climb up for some reason didn’t seem as adventurous as the descent was and with weary legs we managed to reach the top.

And no sooner we did that, than we were greeted with a thunderous pre-monsoon downpour… a blessing in disguise to clean us up!

Now, at lunch we could only thank ourselves that none of us were pure vegetarians and strictly religious. We happened to unknowingly eat Beef! The restaurant served us the tabooed (which we realized when we were almost done with it) in the name of Chicken! Misplaced order, purposeful replacement due to lack of Chicken in the stock or whatever the reason, there was no point in arguing with the manager after we’d the food.  

This incident more than anything else guaranteed to write a parting note on the Wayanad outing and will help us remember the city, which we didn’t know before, forever!

NEXT: Ooty, Tamil Nadu