Ooty and Back

It was sometime late in January that our friends from the apartment suggested a vacation. Since we hadn't gone on one for a long time, I and Ranji decided to go for it. The initial plans were for a trip to Goa, but we were unable to proceed with that plan. That didn't deter us though and we decided to go to Ooty. The thrill for them was a drive in their car all the way there, for us it was being away from the tensions at work. We planned on starting the journey on February 28th, but then had to change it to March 1st since I didn't get leaves from my manager.

On March 1st, we all started early in the morning around 5:15 a.m. Our friends didn't miss the chance to taunt us that we were running late by 15 minutes thanks to us not turning up early enough. We turned a blind eye to that as we so often do and were on our way. After filling up the gas, we hit the Bangalore-Mysore highway at full throttle. This road is a proof to the fact that Karnataka Government is capable of doing an excellent job if they want to; unfortunately, most of the times, they don't. We stopped at Ramanagaram for the morning cuppa and then at Maddur for our breakfast. We didn't have the famous Maddur vada from there, but we all managed to have a fill of our stomachs. Since lunch wasn't going to happen until we hit Ooty, we all had more than the usual portion.

We took the diversion from the highway just before Mysore towards Ooty. The road was still pretty neat, though not exactly smooth, but the lack of vehicular traffic ensured that we had a pretty quick drive. Our next stop was at Gundlupet for another round of coffee for me and tender coconuts for the rest. From there till Bandipur we had a relatively easy drive. At Bandipur, we were treated to quite a few deers which slowed our journey. The fact that our friends' 1-year-old daughter, Sameeksha, had particular liking towards anything on 4 legs made sure that we didn't miss any of those animals. Monkeys were also aplenty, sitting at the roadside and watching the vehicles go by with total disinterest. We did see one elephant but found out that it was the chained, domesticated variety.

After Bandipur, there was a small confusion as to whether to take the shorter route through Kallatti which had around 36 hairpin bends as against the one through Gudallur, but which was shorter by around 30 kms. We debated and decided to take the shorter route. Very soon, we realized that it was pretty exhilarating to go through all those bends. The climb was pretty steep and the Santro Xing was literally crying for mercy. Switching off the air conditioning didn't help much as this car wasn' t exactly made for these kind of drives. We had to take 2 breaks before the car would take us to Ooty.

We reached Ooty around 1:30 p.m. and directly went to Hotel Lakeview where we had called earlier to book the rooms and had been assured that it was off-season and there wasn't any need to book rooms in advance. When we reached there, it was a totally different tune, though, that we had to listen. They said that all their rooms had been booked over the weekend and that they could provide us a room only for a day. Since that didn't make much sense to us, we left there, but not before I gave them a piece of my mind. In case any of you is planning to go to Hotel Lakeview, PLEASE think twice.

Since we were all pretty hungry and reasonably tired, we decided to first have our lunch before searching for an accommodation. We found this Hotel Villa Park which had an excellent setting on a tiny hillock overlooking the Ooty race course. Just when we thought it was the ideal spot, we realized that they don't have non-vegetarian food there. We were too tired to worry about that then and had our lunch from there. After that, we decided to scout for a place to stay. We roamed around entire Ooty, but couldn't find one which met with our budget and cleanliness standards. So, we were back at Hotel Villa Park. We decided to compromise on our meat-eating ways and took 2 standard double rooms there. The luxury rooms were much better, but we decided against it after both the wives gave us husbands the kind of looks which dared us to take those costlier rooms. So, wishing for a peaceful married lives, we settled for the cheaper and less attractive standard rooms. The impressive thing, though, was the bathroom and toilet in the room. I have never seen a cleaner hotel bathroom in my life, I must say. The toilet was literally shining and there was not a spot on the toilet seat. Even Ranji, who has rather exacting standards when it comes to cleanliness, was impressed with it. We decided to have a short nap before proceeding with our Ooty sightseeing.

We realized how tired we were when we hit the bed and decided to skip going out that night. Instead, I, Ranji, and my friend decided to have some drinks. I and Ranji stuck to our wines while he went for whiskey. We played dumb charades for some time before we decided to have our dinner and go to sleep.

The next day morning, after a quick breakfast, we went to Dodabetta Peak which is around 7 kms from Ooty town. The drive was amazing, but we were pretty surprised to find out the peak crawling with tourists. There was a huge group of girls who had come from Bangalore (I guess since they were speaking in a mixture of Kannada and Hindi). I and my friend devoted more time looking at the young ones who were brave enough to face the cold with rather minimal clothing. Since it was pretty foggy, the telescope view wasn't available. I purchased one cap from there.

After Dodabetta peak, we had our lunch and then went to the botanical garden in Ooty. It is just amazing!!! Sameeksha just loved the lawn. She literally crawled all over the place. I laid in the grass and thought it must be like this in heaven - no work, no worry, clean air, greenery all around, a person you love (my wife, in my case) to give you company, and only happiness in your mind and being. But well, good things don't last too long, and as hunger began gnawing at our insides, we left the garden in search of food.

Stomachs filled, we went to a children's play area so that Sameeksha could crawl some more. We also found karting track there and did a few rounds. I had an incident-filled ride the second time round, though, when the front wheel broke off and stood at an angle till I could maneuver the kart back into the stands. We also had a ride in a toy train before we decided to go back. Our friends wanted to go for horse riding and we wanted to go boating, so we reached a compromise and went back into the room and slept off for the rest of the evening. The night followed the same pattern as the previous one, with drinks and dumb charades dominating the proceedings.

Saturday morning, and we were up and ready to leave Ooty. Just as we thought we could start off in time, we were delayed by the only sour incident in our stay at Villa Park. They billed us two separate amounts for the Kichady that we had ordered for the kid, once charging us Rs. 90 and the second time Rs. 24. They gave us different reasons, but since it was getting late for us, we weren't in the mood to listen to all that and we just paid up and left.

This time, though, we decided to take the longer route through Gudallur. That road was absolutely pathetic and we had a bumpy ride till we passed Gudallur. Our journey through first Mudumalai and then through Bandipur was similar to our earlier one with deers, monkeys, and a couple of tuskers waving us on. We had decided to spend the night at Mysore and reached the city at around 1:30 p.m. We checked into Mayura Yatri Nivas. The room there had an old-world charm about it, but since it was a government establishment, it had all the drawbacks of such. After a lengthy lunch, where we were joined by my friend's colleague, we decided to go to the zoo. Since Sameeksha has this great attraction to animals, we decided to curb our likes and dislikes for the small one. She just loved the various animals that were there and was most impressed by the giraffes. I thought the zoo wasn't in the best of conditions with most of the animals looking rather jaded and tired.

Since the time was too short for a visit to either the palace or the art gallery, we decided to enjoy a siesta. I had already seen the Mysore Palace multiple times though Ranji hadn't, but I felt our friends weren't exactly interested in such stuff and assured Ranji that we could have a Mysore trip soon. In the evening, we went to see the palace all lit up, had a toga ride around the palace, and then had dinner at Yatri Nivas before hitting the bed.

Sunday morning and it was pack up time. We started back to Bangalore with mixed feelings - happy for the trip, sad that the usual grind would start soon. Well, there were major plans in our apartment for Holi, so we were needed to find some extra energy to get through the festivities. Within minutes of reaching our place, we changed our clothes and hit the festivities. It was a real wild celebration, unlike last year when we had a very formal celebration. After the tiring trip and mad Holi celebrations, I and Ranji needed 4 baths to start looking human again. Two more baths later, sitting in front of this computer typing out this blog, there is still considerable amount of color on my hands though I have managed to clean off the rest somehow. It will probably take another couple of days before I can get back to my old self.

I don't have any photos right now, but I will try uploading a few from the trip soon.