Ooty

We reached Ooty at around 5PM. We had booked a room in Preethi Classic Towers beforehand (http://www.preethiclassic.com/). Once in we were to get a pleasant surprise - PCT was running out of its Deluxe rooms and offered us a Suite at the same price of Delux as we had already sent the money over Net. Overall we were pretty impressed with this hotel and would suggest people to try this one out if budget permits. We decided to call it a day and went for an early dinner to enjoy the comfort.

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Guys, its Day 4!!!

Before Babu could start off his cab, we thought of roaming around the hotel to find the morning life at Ooty. The hotel is located pretty much at the heart of Ooty - i.e. Charring Cross. You will find people lazily spending time or just loitering around. Its surely far from the maddening crowd..

3 Musketeers at Ooty...

And 3 more...

The leftist Don...

And the flower vendors.

Its time for sight seeing. Our first stop was Pykara falls.

Walk a bit from where your car drops you. Its a nice view. You can go close to the waters, but be a bit cautious. Enjoy the water droplets floating in the air..and the sound of water raring to go downhill...you might suddenly start loving this beautiful earth!!!

However I was personally not very happy to find little children managing shops in and around Ooty. They should have been in school or playground. And they were not much interested in business either - but as the ad says - Life eej hard!! :-(

We had gone to the Pykara lake also - but it was not that impressive.

We stoppped at multiple places. Interestingly in Ooty, you will find a dozens of "Shooting spot" - where some movie has been pictured at some point of time. Ask your partner to take a picture of yours - it might help in orkut.

We liked most the Pine Forest (dont remember the name anyway)...

We decided to give it a miss to Ooty lake also as it didnt sound much intertesting to us. Our next destination was the Botanical Garden. Its on lower slopes of the Doddabetta peak. This is a lovely place - the greenery and the undulations give it a new dimension. "This botanical garden was created by John Sullivan, Collector of the district of Coimbatore in 1819. The Marquis of Tweedale prepared the initial layout during late 1840s. The Gardens have around 1000 species, both exotic and indigenous, of plants, shrubs, ferns, trees, and herbal plants. In the centre of the Gardens lie a fossilized tree trunk estimated to be 20 million years old." [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooty_Botanical_Gardens].

Get a good camera and a macro lens - you are in for some good snaps.

After our lunch, we started off for Dodabetta Peak. The road was a bit rough - but watch out through your car windows. Its a treat for your eyes. No camera is good enough to capture the colors of the lush greenery and the bluish mountains. When we reached Dodabetta (btw this is the highest peak in South India - its 8,640 ft above sea level) it was drizzling. On a bright sunny day, localites claim that even Mysore can be seen from this peak (obviously via telescope). But it was not such a day - clouds were slowly creeping in. The visibility was getting low - the clouds were flying across our face touching our cheeks.

For those shutterbugs, please keep aside your camera for sometime. There are some moments in life, which you can hardly capture on any earthly medium. Just accept those moments - you might repent your whole life not experiencing those moments to the fullest extent. I wish the crowd was not there and I could spend the whole day there spreading my wings in the clouds..

Our next stop was Ooty Rose Garden.

You would get tired to see sooooo many types of Roses in a single garden - we enquired in the office and they informed that they actually have > 3000 types of Roses in this garden.

The bouquet and the India map (made out of Roses!) are treat for the eye. There are multiple layers in the garden. Please bring your digital camera - otherwise you would run out of film pretty fast.

We decided to call it a day (not before we got some home made chocolates though :-) - you would get it cheaper at Kodai, but you need to taste the Ooty chocolates also yaar)...