My latest (and favorite) trip was
to Ooty, a hill station in Tamil Nadu. Chris, Jackie, Lauren, Kara and I went
together. We left Pondicherry on
March 27th and caught the ECR bus to Chennai where we took and AC
Sleeper bus to Ooty. This trip
went so smoothly it still surprises me: the sleeper bus wasn’t ridiculously bumpy
so we were able to actually sleep; when we got there it was cold and beautiful;
we walked for about 30 minutes to find the hotel we wanted to stay at, and then
a man pulled up in a car next to us and told us his hotel had rooms and he
would drive us there… his hotel was the same one we had been looking for. We
were there for four days and three nights. The first day we walked around and
bought a ton of chocolate. I still have some left over from the trip- so much
chocolate. The second day we went
on a tour of Ooty that took us to several interesting and scenic points (the
first place they took us was a golf course, but thankfully the rest of the tour
was better).
The
third day was by far my favorite in Ooty. We went trekking (or hiking) on a
tour lead by a man who had lived in Ooty his whole life. After a rocky start
(the van we were in didn’t have any gas and it took half and hour to get
moving), we headed for the hills. Our first area that we went through was a
forest with eucalyptus (which is not native to India, but to Australia), next
we walked through a tea plantation. It was beautiful- green and lush. The air
actually smelled good for a change and it was SILENT at some points. That’s
hard to find in India. After the tea plantation we hiked to a small village for
lunch. It was very simple and delicious- rice and dhal and, of course, chai.
The real trekking began after we had lunch: we hiked for about 1 ½ hours and
made it to the top of a mountain (I’m sure Kelly would think it was a hill… but
I’m not from Colorado). You could see for miles around, it was clear and cool
and wonderful. Aside from Kara scaring me by going so close to the edge (she
likes to mess with me), it was perfect. We hiked back down where the van picked
us up and took us back to the hotel.
Later Kara, Jackie and I went into town and on our way back were pulled
into a parade where an 8 year old girl danced much better than us.
The last day we wandered around and got lost a bit before
lunch at a place called the Sidewalk Café- I had grilled cheese, yum. We headed
back to Chennai that night and got in around 8:30am.
Ooty
was the perfect place to visit at this time: it’s cool and beautiful whereas
Pondicherry is getting hotter and hotter and slowly making me go insane. On
Tuesday it was 90 degrees at 11am. The rest of this week I am planning on
relaxing and sleeping. Hopefully we will be cooking (because I am SO SICK of
rice and chapatti) and swimming a bit at a nice hotel called Mango Hill.
No comments:
Post a Comment