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Published: February 13th 2010
Hi All,
We’re still trying to catch up on all the blogs. Our current location (Alleppey) seems to ‘close’ at nine so there really isn’t much else we can do…No ‘special tea’ served here.
So, this part of our trip led us further and higher inland to the Nilgiri Hill Stations in Tamil Nadu state. The hill stations are a cluster of about three or four little towns built alongside the railway. Our plan was, in effect, to travel down the stations backwards but we’ll get on to why travel in India doesn’t always go to plan later.
We were roughly 2000m above sea level and the highest peak lies at 2600m. This meant a new type of chilly weather was to envelope Nikki’s bronze skin and serve to make Gail feel more at home. We had yet another exciting journey making it up this epic hill on the cheap and cheerful Indian public bus. We were crammed in with legs bent-double over our rucksacks as some selfish people wanted to sit down. How rude. Six hours of sweating at 4km/h chug-chug-chugging made a rather unpleasant journey worse. Luckily, the views were absolutely stunning and unlike anything we have
seen so far in India. The tea plantations look gorgeous climbing up the hills side and are surrounded by the tallest trees ever.
We found another four-quid a night room (yeah) and the whole hotel was painted in a lime green gloss. It was run by some lovely yet strange men who felt in necessary to wake us up at 7.30 every morning to ask if we wanted coffee or HOT water. We seem to be getting lots of free bonuses with our hotels and this one was no different…on night three, tucked up sleepily a little scratching could be heard. Yep, a free mouse in the room! Good always cancels out the bad as we had a TV and managed to watch Federer win the Australian open and catch up on Baywatch Hawaii. Nice.
Ooty and its cooler climate mainly attract tourist to do hill trekking. Unfortunately, seven months later and Gail’s foot is still causing her some grief so we weren’t able to do this. Such a shame as the surroundings really are beautiful. We did manage to book ourselves onto another touristy day trip where we got to see all the major sights: Lake, Botanical
TKC -Boating
Safety first!Gardens, Dolphin’s Nose, tea plantations and the highest peak. Imagine our horror when our old, rackety tour bus reverse-parked at the highest peak and then the helper boy quickly jumped out to place a rock behind the wheel to act as a break - Death Bus 3?!
Yet again, we enjoyed our celebrity status on the bus and found ourselves to be the only European tourists. This meant that our guide’s commentry through the sights made little sense to us but we enjoyed watching everybody else nod along and then pity us. Lovely to see quite a few couples on their honeymoon who were really interested in whether we were married or had boyfriends. They also looked quite shocked to learn our ages. We think Indians assume that we’re 18 and most English tourist ask what we’re studying at college.
We spent an afternoon at The Lake which is pretty much like Windermere. Obviously we let the knitted characters loose on a pedal boat. They had a lovely time but were pretty tired afterwards. Next to the lake lies the knitted characters’ Motherland: Thread World! Imagine the size of Nikki’s smile when she saw yet another crap museum.
Yes, we went in. (N.B Ooty is home to the second Wax World but luckily Gail managed to refrain Nikki from this treat.) Thread World is basically twelve-years worth of seemingly pointless work. It’s basically a garden created by wrapping thread around things so that they resemble plants. Twelve years - seriously, why? We managed it in minutes but the nice boy happily posed with TKC as a memento.
Ooty is a really relaxing place and Gail has ranked in her top three already. The only downside is that the further away from Goa we stray, the harder it becomes to find food. It’s got to the point where we are walking into places literally asking for “Food” and still being told no. There’s a lot of confusion as the locals speak limited English, less than our Indian, and the overly-complicated lunch/dinner menus make it a nightmare and constant drag. Also, after the illnesses early on, we’re really weary of places that don’t look particularly clean.
As mentioned earlier, the Hill Stations are connected by the famous Blue Mountain Express railway which is a little steam train. This is one of the reasons we went there as the
views down the hill are fantastic. We decided to catch the train out to our next destination but back in November there was a huge landslide which has closed the central sections so all our planning was buggered. We jumped on for part of the journey in our First Class smug seats and saw the lush, green, beautiful scenery with our eyes. Our ears on the other hand were busy being bombarded with tales from our new best friends Neil and Hazel Professional Photographers. A really lovely old couple who have been to India over 20 times and were absolutely full of travellers’ tales, warnings and advice. Neil was a professional photographer and his kind wife insisted he take a photo of us on our ‘little’ camera. Cleaver us decided to copy all the photographs he took.
With the landslide buggering up our plans, we made a detour to Conoor then on to Coimbatore for the night. This actually proved to be one of the funniest, drunkest evenings in India to date - mainly because we could actually find alcohol! We stayed in the weird boozy little area opposite the train station as we were due to leave the
next day for Fort Kochi. We leant a lot about Indian culture this night as we headed out for a couple of drinks:
1) The bars don’t have windows so you can’t tell what you’re walking into - good or bad…
2) There are no women in the bars
3) There are no women’s toilets
4) Men are not used to seeing women in their bar
5) They try to sit women in the corner
6) Nobody puts Baby in the corner
7) With each drink order, they bring you at least five free snacks
8) We had these instead of paying for dinner
9) Chicken, chilli chips, cumber, pineapple, Bombay mix, boiled eggs and vodka please…
10) It’s cheaper to buy vodka & mixer than it is lager
11) We visited all 6 bars in the area
12) The best bar was The Pub. We were escorted to the entrance, introduced to the manager,
shown to some seats and chaperoned by the waiter all evening including to and from the male
toilet. The 18-25 year old boys were told to calm down their dancing, and not to look at or talk to
us.
13) This treatment
felt very alien to us yet, at the time, we appreciate why they do it as we would
have been pounced on.
Needless to say, we had our first proper Indian train journey with a hangover! Indian train stations are huge; the trains are at least 30-40 carriages long, if not more. We booked a general seat which is known as cattle class but turned out to be alright. We were told by Hazel to ‘fight for our seats’ but the real issue is finding them. It is so confusing as there were no guards to ask, the tickets made no sense at the time and the sheer size of the train makes it a bit of a free-for-all. Eventually, we managed to shift some people and settle in for the journey. The highlight came about half-way through when the hawkers started walking up and down the carriages selling chai, hairbrushes, books, deep-fried chilly, etc. There was a hawker who was a little more aggressive than most it has to be said… A Hijra (visible non-heterosexual group in India that’s made up of a caste of transvestites and eunuchs who wear women’s clothes) sauntered down the aisle demanding
money off everyone. Those who don’t give get a filthy look and an actual hit. We were hit on the shoulder. Surreal.
Overall, trains are great; Ooty is lovely; Coimbatore is a blur; Hijras are scary.
Much love,
Gail and Nikki
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alan worrall
non-member comment
get help
is there no little humpa lumpas to carry those bags? lol