Ooty

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This school term has been the longest so far. We started on January 10th and have just broken up on 25th March with one long weekend. One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to go somewhere different once a month, i.e outside Bangalore. Anna (who I teach with) and I had decided back in January to go to Ooty for this one long weekend we’d have, which was at the end of February. She booked a driver and pretty fancy air-conditioned-with-DVD-player car (!) and at 6am on the Friday morning we set off, my Lonely Planet in hand to help us decide where to go as we’d decided not to book anywhere.

The drive was pretty smooth as it’s the same route part of the way to Coorg, so I recognized all the Café Coffee Days en route! We also stopped for breakfast at a place recommended to us by a few of the teachers at school. It was busy even at 8am, always a good sign. We took a seat and ordered a masala dosa, two cups of chai (which came in steaming glasses as usual, yum) and with our own additions of apples, spent around 40 minutes having a leisurely breakfast before heading off again, not stopping til we reached a place called The Jungle Retreat about 30-40mins’ drive from Ooty itself.

We were shown a few rooms and plumped for the ‘deluxe’ I think it was called, which was an absolutely massive room, wooden floors and pillars with a brick and thatch roof, a verandah with 2 benches and a table and bathroom. We arrived at around midday and spent the rest of the day lazing about, reading, I took a dip in the pool, looking at the birds, stroking the many, many pet cats there and the two dogs and generally chilling out. The food was great too, a buffet with lots on offer both Indian and ‘Western’ if you want to call it that.

The next morning we decided to head into Ooty and with someone from the Jungle Retreat’s recommendation along with my guidebook, headed for a place called King’s Cliff. Wow, what a colonial throwback. As you can see from the pictures, it’s on a hill overlooking Ooty with polished wooden floors and walls, colonial-style armchairs, open fires and you can really imagine plantation owners of bygone years having their chai, coffee and smoking their cigars of an evening. We stayed in a room with an open fire, which was lovely in the evening as once again it was chilly enough both for a fire and hot water bottles that the staff offered us! The menu’s extensive too.

Ooty doesn’t quite fit with its surroundings; around it are undulating hills of green and multicoloured houses, whereas the town itself is bustling and a wee bit smoggy. Anna and I were on a mission to seek out the famous Ooty chocolates though and we weren’t disappointed; there were several but we went for one over its pleasing aesthetics and cleanliness! We got to try before we bought and I ended up buying some white chocolate, caramels and some dark. I have to be honest and say I still prefer Green & Black’s! but Ooty chocolate was definitely superior to other chocolate I’ve tried here. We also visited a shop called the Green Shop, which sells homemade organic produce and really pretty pottery (I have too much china as it is, so resisted). I bought some honey for me and as a present along with some vanilla honey lip balm, yum. We also visited a tea factory, tried some chai masala and of course I had to buy some!

I would definitely recommend Ooty as a break from Bangalore. The views by road are stunningly picturesque and a real change from a city like Bangalore. The air’s fresh and a few degrees cooler and it’s a whole lot greener than a big city.

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