Ooty

We left early this morning for Ooty. We went on a tour bus. It was supposed to be a bus that had been retrofitted with eighteen seats instead of twenty-two for comfort, but it still had all the seats and it was pretty squished. There were twenty-five people onboard and we bounced along the roads to Indian pop music playing a little on the loud side.

The drivers are a little scary here. They seem to play chicken with each other and just at the last moment somehow they squeeze past each other. It seems like half the time the bus is on the wrong side of the road or at least half on the wrong side of the road as they pass motorbikes, cows, carts, or other vehicles. There is a countdown for the thirty-six hairpin turns that lead the way up to Ooty which is a hill station.

Along the way you see all sorts of terraced hills. Tea is one of the main crops and we stopped at a tea garden. We drank some chai. They let us taste chocolate tea and red tea and of course we had to buy some. Then we went behind the shop to see the tea plants. I thought they might have more of a smell, but the small bushes with the shiny, tough leaves don’t have a strong smell to them.

We finally made it to the top of the hill and headed straight to the lake. There were some amusement rides there and the girls and I had a ride on the Break Dance. I felt a little unsettled after that, but still managed to eat a samosa.

We had a slight disagreement with the bus driver. He was supposed to drop us at the hotel, but instead he wanted us to take a rickshaw from one of the tourist areas. We argued about it because it wasn’t what we agreed to, but in the end we did take the rickshaw. You win some you lose some.

After settling in and dropping our bags at the hotel we went to the Botanical Gardens. The flowers weren’t all that spectacular. They would probably be better just after the wet season. It was however a fun place for us. We were asked several times to be in a picture with some Indian tourists, and a number of times people came up to us to ask our names and where we were from. We’re feeling famous again.

A couple of little girls came up to me and gave me flowers that they had picked. I was touched at the gesture, but wasn’t sure what to do with them. There is a Rs. 100 fine for picking the flowers! Once they were out of sight, I put them in my roomy sweater’s pocket, away from the eyes of the park rangers!

It’s pretty cold here, or at least it is for us. The temperature was okay during the day, probably about 25 degrees, but when the sun set it got cold quickly. They say the temperature usually goes down to around ten degrees at night.

CM