Nilgiris...!

Another weekend at Bangalore and we, the lukkha interns, set out for Ooty!

We reached Ooty Saturday morning at 7 after an awful 8 hour bus ride. Without any woolens and draped in only a half sleeve T-shirt and jeans, I was shivering amidst the cool morning air. We booked the cheapest lodge around and dumped ourselves on d bed wid memories of d bus journey almost luring us to sleep. But the prospect of sight-seeing was more enticing! After freshening up and a light breaker we set out for the Rose Garden on foot.

It was a long walk and not helping at all in reducing my exhaustion..But as I entered the garden the smell and sight of a million roses captivated me. Welcoming us in, there were a chariot and a peacock decorated with roses. It was beautiful. The whole garden had roses planted on either sides of the passageway with weird labels to each of them. Some of them were quite ironical, others humorous and while the rest seemed logic-less! We took a few pics here and there before we set out for the Botanical Garden, again on foot.

Once we reached the famous Botanical Gardens there was a long queue, discouraging us from getting inside. We ditched the plan to see the Garden and retreated, only to move towards Dodabetta peak, the highest peak of the Nilgiris.

After a couple of kilometers of walk and futile attempts at hitch-hiking, we realized that there was no transport to Dodabetta from our present location and we had to go back to the town bus stand for conveyance, which was quite far. Thus, we postponed our plans of Dodabetta to the next day and this time, wisely enuff, booked a Sumo for the 7 of us for the next day which would take us to Pykara as well.

Having nothing better to do we set out for the Ooty lake and boat house expecting to finally find a place to sit on the lakeside. Hence, we started out..again on foot for a 3-4 kilometer walk..Having walked for atleast 10 kilometers from the moment we reached Ooty, we found a place near d lake to sit and relax. We played cards..and it was awesome. The fitting end to a not-so-good beginning. The next 3 hours flew by and were total fun. The weather didnt dissappoint us either. After the amazing evening, we returned to our lodge and I slept like a horse.

Sunday morning we set out for Pykara at 9 on the Sumo we had booked for the day. We saw the Golf course in the passing, and later stopped at Kamraj Sagar Lake. It was a nice lake bordered by pine forest and was below road-level meaning that we had to descend quite a steep slope to reach there. We clicked a few pics and returned to the Sumo.

The next stop was the 9th Mile Wenlock Downs. It was basically an undulating hill covered with grass and very good scenery providing excellent scope for more pics :P

Then we went to the Pykara falls and the Boat house where we did boating. Our return journey took a lot of time coz of heavy traffic. We passed our times singing songs: old songs,new songs, love songs,sad songs, happy songs,arbit songs, bad songs, more songs :D

By the time we reached back Ooty, it was past 5 and we had to skip Dodabetta (was it jinxed!?)
We settled for in a CCD outlet and occupied the corner couches. I had Irish coffee and Choc Fantasy with ice-cream and choc sauce. We stayed put at CCD till 9.30 gossiping and watching the DC innings of the IPL final.

On our way to the bus stand we suddenly realised we had to buy the famous Ooty flavoured tea and home made chocolates. In desparation, and due to shortage of time we grabbed watever was nearest at hand and boarded our bus. How was the journey back? Don't even get me started on that!

Overall it was an awwessuuumm trip!!!

P.S:Thanx to Bajo, Fengshui, Mayhool, Manu, Nandu n Subject (in alphabetical order)!!
P.P.S: i ll post links for the pics in the comments soon..