Ooty Trip

This week was a busy one for us. We began our week with a trip to Ooty, a town of about 100,000 people in the Nilgiri Hills approximately 2 hours (100 kms) from Coimbatore. Towns that are located in the hills are called hill stations. The setting is quite beautiful, and the weather is much milder than in Coimbatore, although we still managed to get a bit of a sunburn. Fourteen hairpin turns lie between the base of the hill and Ooty. When we say hairpin turns, we mean tight hairpin turns. We went with Sister Mary, Brother Augustine (our driver), and his nephew, Charles. Brother Augustine's car is too old to make the trip to Ooty, so he asked his nephew to drive us. This picture of Ooty was taken from Doddabetta, the highest point in the state of Tamil Nadu.


Once up at Doddabetta, which is basically a look out point, we ate lunch. We were VERY hungry by the time we arrived. Doddabetta was the last stop on our trip.Sister Mary prepared a lot of food, and her cousin in Coonor (a town close to Ooty) also made a few things for us, as well. 

The area around Ooty is much greener than Coimbatore. Coimbatore is suffering from a drought, but even without a drought, Ooty is still more lush than Coimbatore. The British settled in this area and built many summer homes to get away from the heat on the plains of India. We can see why they would want to have summer homes here. This is a small settlement on the way to Ooty.




On our way to Ooty, we saw many, many tea plantations along the slopes of the hills. It was really quite a site to see. We've never seen anything like it. This hillside is covered with tea plants. The steep slopes are terraced to allow tea plants to be planted from the base of the hills to the tops.








In Ooty, we went to the Rose Garden. The rose season was over, so most of the roses were not in bloom. But, we could tell how beautiful the garden would look during blooming season. We were able to find a few blossoms remaining. Although we saw very few roses, we enjoyed the peaceful feeling of the garden.







We shall always cherish our friendship with Sister Mary. She was a great personal guide for us. This archway is in the rose garden.

The boat house is a must see in Ooty. In reality it is more like a marina on a small lake where people can rent paddle boats, row boats, etc. or take a larger tour type of boat.

Of course, we couldn't resist taking a short train ride along one side of the lake. We feel so blessed to have so many people care for us. We have been treated royally by our friends in India. We can't help but have a great love for the people here.








We also went to the Botanical Gardens. We could have spent an entire day here, but we spent only one to one and a half hours there. Again, we could feel the peace of this well kept and well manicured area. Many of the trees here are over 200 years old.














They have some interesting sculptures on their hedges. They have pruned the tops of these hedges to look like various animals.














One interesting display was a map of India made of a variety of flowers. The bottom state is Tamil Nadu, our state. It is one of the largest states in India.

We also were able to see the type of houses that the Toda tribal people of the area used to live in hundreds of years ago. This house has a large door (not visible here) that has been added to facilitate the workers going in and out with different supplies. The door that is original to this type of house is the small, short door that can be seen. The people would have to bend down to enter into the house, just the same, according to Sister Mary, as with igloos.

Ooty is known for its vegetables, and it supplies most of the surrounding region with its produce. The fresh carrots looked exceptionally tasty. We saw many people walking around munching on the carrots. We wished we had some bleach with us so could have purchased some to eat while we were there. (We are to wash all our fruits and vegetables with a bleach solution before eating them.)






Of course, our trip wouldn't be complete without the monkeys. We saw many, many monkeys on the way up to Ooty and on the trip down. These ones were shy and turned their backs to us. Most of them sat along the side of the road like a bunch of old men watching the traffic go by. It was funny in some ways.

And, lastly, we were on the look out for elephants, but we didn't see any. We definitely did not want to park to see if elephants would come. Somehow, we don't think they would go around the parked cars. In another place (on the way to youth conference later in the week), we saw a sign that said the cars had to give the elephants the right of way. We don't think that drivers would try to argue that one!




Because our week was filled with so many activities, we cannot mention all of them in this post. We returned from Ooty Monday evening with just enough time for us to pack our suitcase for our early morning flight Tuesday morning to Bangalore for a conference with all the couple missionaries in our mission. Within one hour of returning from Bangalore Thursday morning, we unpacked our suitcase and re-packed it for our trip to youth conference. We will post another blog for those conferences later this week.