Saturday, March 28, 2009

Ooty & Conoor - Day 2 at Ooty

Day 2 (Ooty):
Next day morning was beautiful and after a hot breakfast of idlis and dosas at Charing Cross, we headed towards the botanical garden. We wanted to be there before the crowd gathered. The garden was beautiful with early morning dew all over the place.


We were out of the park by noon around 1 pm. There were lot of garment and trinket shops lining the parkng lot, all set up by people who looked to be from the North Eastern states. They had put up colorful flags around the parking lot, probably some celebration.


We had our lunch again at some place in Charing Cross and started for Doddabetta peak. The Doddabetta peak is supposed to give beautiful views of the city. After parking our car at the parking lot we had to walk briefly up through a road lined with peanut and toy sellers to reach the top. The peak was crowded beyond our imagination and we hastily retreated after taking a few photographs.
On the way back from the Doddabeta peak we passed through a tea factory that let you visit their factory and see the tea processing plant. A nice strategy for the tea garden to attract customers, earn a nice entry fee, and sell their tea at a higher rate directly to end customers. They also have an adjacent chocolate factory in similar lines. And they are in the process of creating a view point inside their premises. Couple of years later, people would throng that place just like Doddabeta and the tea and chocolate factories would most of their sales directly to the tourists.
Before coming back to Charing Cross we visited the Ooty meadows where scenes of many Indian movies are shot. It was enjoyable and not as crowded as the other places we visited during the day. After spending some nice time there we headed back to Charing Cross. At Charing Cross we bought some chocolates from the famous "King Star" chocolate factory outlet, took some photographs at the Charing Cross fountain, had food at some place there and headed back to the hotel. 


The next day we had planned to start early towards Conoor and then back to Bangalore. We had probably made a mistake of visiting Conoor on the last day. There is a beautiful train journey from Ooty to Conoor and we could have visited Conoor and come back to Ooty on the second day's stay there. On the third day we could have seen around Ooty and left for Bangalore comfortably at noon. Anyway what was done was done and we slept nicely in anticipation of the next day.

Continued... Day 3 (Conoor & Back to Bangalore)

8 comments:

  1. Ooty is the capital town of the district of nilgiri. I would say that the climate in ooty is pleasant and is a great place for leisure tours. There are many places you can tour, such as the Botanical Gardens, Lamb's rock and Dodabetta Peak, Ooty Lake, Kodanadu's View Point, and also weekend trips like: Madumalai Wildlife Sanctuary, Kotagiri, Kalhatty Waterfalls, Dolphin's Nose, Avalanche, Coonnoor, on tours to Ooty India.

    Some of the tourist attractions of Ooty are Ooty Lake which was was built for providing an irrigation tank to the people of this region, Botanical Garden situated on the lower slopes of the Dodabetta peak and Kalhatty Falls which is located about 113 kilometers away from ooty.

    Ooty is on the narrow gauge railway, connected to Mettupalayam (47 km), which is directly connected to Coimbatore and Chennai. The famous toy train connects Ooty with Mettupalayam and Coonoor. A good network of roads and national highways connect Ooty with all major towns and cities. There are regular bus services to and from Coimbatore, Trichy, Bangalore, Madurai, Kanyakumari, Mysore, Palghat, Calicut, Tirupati and other important destinations in South India. Ooty is also well connected with major cities of Kerala and Karnataka. Coimbatore, 105 km from Ooty, is the nearest airport.

    You can opt for a 3 days ooty tour or a 4 days coimbatore ooty tour or a mysore ooty tour to enjoy this beautiful destination of charming hills and pleasant climate. I think it is during summer vacation most people are visiting this place. Ooty is also a honeymooners paradise in south India.

    India is truly a great place with lots of diversity and is a unique place in the world. Indian tourism industry has performed well in the recent years. You can follow my updates on @india_tourism in twitter or in my india travel blog.

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  2. Nice post on Ooty, seems strange somebody is offering tour package on your blog. Please remove word verification Tan

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  3. @umesh I have let the comment remain as it was more informative than just an ad. I didn't see too much of it, otherwise I would have weeded it out.

    Thanks for caring!

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  4. Great pics..even i visited ooty recently and I have written a post on my blog..check it out

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  5. Nice post. We did travel by train from Conoor to Ooty! http://gowthamspeaks.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-ooty-queen-of-hill-stations.html.

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  6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  7. :D I open your page and what I see first CACTUS :)

    I love ooty! My trips to ooty were some of the best trips I had and the city never fails to amaze me...

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Thank you. I'm all ears!