Ooty!

We in Mangalore, celebrate Sauramana Ugadi (New year as per solar calendar) on the 14th of April, but this year the celebration happened on the 15th as 14th was a new moon day. I celebrated the festival at my in-laws place this time, in Coimbatore and took 3 days of much needed vacation to drive away the voidness and boredom. :-)

Driving to cool and fresh Ooty from the hot sweating Coimbatore was a good plan. Eearly morning on the 13th we drove to the Nilgiris. Soon after Mettupalyam the road winds up into the mountains and you can feel the cool breeze brush your cheeks softly.

Botanical garden was a treat to me as I love plants. I got to see several varieties of flowering plants. My aunt, who is my Guru for Gardening, had a craze for collecting different varieties of Begonias; I carried along this craze like some legacy and had around 13 varieties of them. I was glad to see some rare species of the same here – Tuberous Begonia, which can flower in three different ways depending on the amount of sunlight falling over it was the major attraction for me.

We visited the temple and their settlement of a tribe called Toda.

Interestingly many or rather almost everyone; from Gardeners to Shop keepers spoke Kannada. Most of them are from a Kannada community called Badaga, this made me converse with the gardeners on the plant culture and propagation easier than I had expected. :-)

Rose garden was setting up for the May flower festival. Even though it was not as good as the Botanical garden I enjoyed going through nice and some weird names that each and every rose had such as - Blue dream, Ingrid Bergman, By appointment :-) and Jayalalitha… A green rose caught most of the attention.

We went boating on Pykara Lake as it drizzled freshening the environment even more and we visited few viewpoints that showed us the untouched Ooty with forest, gladly left to itself with limited human interventions.


One can’t walk out of Ooty without a homemade chocolate, can we? So, I got some nice chocolates back with me as sweet memories of this beautiful place.

Comments

  1. You were in Ooty and did not inform me, this despite me having told you in a comment in a previous post!

    Very bad :(

    Good to know that you felt well about the place!

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  2. Oops!!! I knew i was in for this. :-) I did recollect that you were at Ooty but our's was a very short visit, But Ooty is such a nice place that i am sure to visit again, so there is a next time. :-) Thanks Rakesh.

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  3. You refreshed my memories of Ooty visit. The lake looks the same what it was 4 years back.

    And we had also bought lots of home made chocolate. :)

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  4. :-) Yep! the chocolates are good

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  5. idn't know the chocolate connection about Ooty but then I have never been there. The flowers are so beautiful.

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  6. missing the home made chocs..it was a tradition when i was a kid to go to ooty from madras every summer holiday as my dad studied in Lovedale..now its been years since I went there..

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  7. Ingrid Bergman? Serious?

    No Ingmar?:P

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  8. Kish - :-) Serious, and i am sure Ingmar would not have liked a rose being named after him. :-))

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  9. The pictures were lovely- and the post interesting. Thank you for taking the time to introduce me to Ooty- the picture and dialogue really made me want to go and visit.

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  10. Lovely reading this. I was in Ooty in January this year, and like before, went to the Lake and spent quite a bit of time at the Botanical Gardens too.

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