Away from the concrete jungle - Day II

Continued from Day I

A Good Morning

Woke up after a nice sleep, not missing the sunrise seemed to be more interesting than lying inside the blanket. Opened the window just above the head and it was still dark outside. It was 6 in the morning and the sun had still not decided to show up. Woolen blanket seemed to be the better place to stay at this time, and got back for another nice nap.

There is no such 'sunrise' point here, said one of the local shop keepers when we later enquired. It was 8 in the morning and we had ordered some toasts and coffee. It was bloody cold outside and Ooty looked just awesome during the day. Went for a small walk to some shops close by to get to know the places nearby and to plan the day. Breakfast had arrived by then and Shekhar had already started on his 'Learn tamil in a few days' attempt for the day. Ram was busy taking this intensive crash course blasting his favorite tamil music, courtesy 'Sun Music' for providing the materials. It didn't take too long until we were all set to leave for the day. Ram, for some reason thought that his car 'must' have a bath too and arranged for someone to come and clean it just before leaving. This did give us some time to check out the places around for a while.

Cottage

Day II was more of a very peaceful day with a lot of visiting places and food. We got into a lot of so-called 'concept' photography which was the main culprit for hitting the 600 snaps mark :-) Car was almost ready, I could see it needed a lot of cleaning, maybe it's seeing water for the first time. One sensible thing that we all decided on during this time was to extend the 2-day trip to a 3-day trip. Ooty was too good a place to leave in just 2 days.

The Gate near our cottage..

The Gate

The Monster

I happened to see this huge monster below resting in peace somewhere near the cottage.

Monster

It was frightening to see how it got hurt. There is no way this was going to be just-a-hit, we thought. Considering the height at which it got hit, it really didn't look like it hit another monster of it's size which could have prolly caused such a damage. It couldn't have been some two-wheeler either considering how 'bad' its got hit. The wheels and other parts of the body seemed to be intact. Taking a closer look at the injury, we could see traces of mud holding on to the damaged part. There were no traces of any other paint which means that it had prolly not hit another weaker four-wheeler. It should have hit some rock of a size slightly bigger than the monster's wheel, we concluded. Thank God this doesn't look like a few other poor souls were involved in this mess.

A few momnets later, the monster's owner happened to visit the place. A daily health checkup types I think. It had hit a huge dust-bin, he told us. A huge concrete-steel dust-bin. Yes, there were no other poor souls involved in this mess.

Cleaning was complete and it was time to decide which place to visit first.

Men at work

Boating

Boating was our first spot. Place was just awesome. Lots of tall trees, nice cool weather, beautiful lake, lots of babes. A lot of honeymooners is what we noticed. I really didn't expect so many newlywed couples to visit Ooty during this time. It gets very cold and you hardly get to enjoy the place due to fog is what I heard. This was not the case anyways. Maybe this place gets too crowded during the 'season' time.

Trees

The huge tree

More trees

Flowers

Lawn

Boating!

Green

The Rose Park

We had then been to the Rose Park in Ooty. This one was huge with rows and rows of all kinds of rose varieties. Really not sure what makes a rose so special to the girls; well rose is beautiful but just another flower anyways. I think this should have been one of the most crowded places in Ooty during the season time. There was not much of a crowd in here probably coz this is not the season for rose. Well this is not the right time to get to Ooty in the first case.

Rose Park

Okay I just realized that there are too many snaps left to stuff in here and that uploading 'em to my Picasa album would be a better option. Would get all of 'em uploaded sometime. Will write further about the third day sometime later.

To be continued...

Away from the concrete jungle

Six reasons why I thought this particular trip should come in here.

1. Until the last few minutes, we didn’t know where exactly we are going to travel during the weekend. All we knew is we are going to visit some place. Ooty was one of the last options.

2. It was a sleepless Friday night and we didn’t like the idea of taking rest and leaving. Decided to pick our bags (and cam esp.) and leave straight. Our bags were really not that important but the cam definitely was.

3. There were at least 5 accidents on our way to Ooty that day with 2 of those accidents on cars that overtook us a few minutes back.

4. We didn’t know the temperature in our destination could go up to -3 decrees C during this season until we reached the foot of the hill. This made things a lot more interesting though.

5. The 2 month old car that we travelled already suffered a lot of injury. Thanks to its owner’s frequent Bangalore-Trichy trips :-)

6. The breakdown.


Okay paying due respects to Section 2 - Renovation, I am planning to split this one into few parts, how many parts and how long each part is I have no idea. Anyways.


The Plan

It all started with a plan to visit Pondicherry as a company sponsored trip for Christmas holidays. This flopped due to various reasons. I would still say this got postponed and not cancelled. A plan to travel along the E.C.R is something that you can never ditch. Then explored hell a lot of options and settled on Yercaud. Plan to Yercaud looked good, it’s closer to Bangalore and it is not expected to be crowded during this time. Pondicherry was over-crowded and all rates hiked up, a lot of carnivals should be the reason is what one of my friends guessed. Well scrapping out the Pondi trip had nothing to do with the crowd or the hiked-up rates. And not the carnivals for sure!. For some reason, Ooty came up in between but was rejected many times considering a few extra kilometers that we might have to travel (over a hundred and fifty extra approx). But what the hell, got a car and five guys all charged up for the trip, so why not Ooty.

Plan was simple. I don’t like planning in the first case and things have always worked better unplanned. We happened to do a lil of planning for the Pondi trip just coz there was a 3 month old kid which was supposed to accompany us. Now that Pondi trip is scrapped out, it was just five of us. Ram woke his car up from the shed and in a few mins, we were all together sitting in the car, me, Shekhar, Ram, Priyatham and Venkat, all set to leave.


The Begining

Me and Ram were supposed to drive through the highway which was the most interesting part. We started somewhere during the morning and crossing the city limits was a challenge in its own ways. We hit the highway a couple of minutes later, something that we had been waiting for a long time. Considering the fact that we had taken close to 600 snaps during this trip, I guess these pics can describe the trip better than what I can with words.

The Long ride

Green Field

Lunch on the (High)way

Old car

A good lunch would mean a lot of energy; a long highway would mean a lot of speed. Both together would mean a lot of fun.

With five buffaloes and fan turned on in the car (Photo courtesy - Shekhar)

Forest check post - Tamil Nadu border (Getting closer to Ooty!)

Accident on the way (One of 'em)

Peacock

This was the last good thing that I can talk about in the rest of the trip towards Ooty. Roads were messed up and it was a real roller-coaster ride. The car could not literally move at any speed greater than 5 Km/hr in most of the parts of the road going forward. Travelling up-hill was kewl in it's own ways, with around 36 sexy hair-pin bends and place getting colder and colder as we moved up. It was just before climbing up that we heard that the temperature could go less than 0 degrees which made things really exciting. Being in South India most of my life, and considering how 'cool' the weather is in Chennai all through the year, this was something that I had never imagined would happen anytime soon. Would we really get to see frozen water? Well anyways...

Ooty

It took close to an hour is my guess to climb the hill and hey, we had reached what everyone in the car had been waiting for, we had reached Ooty! It should have been night, I guess, but it gets darker sooner is what we heard later. The fountain during the night was a great welcome.

The Fountain

Place was super kewl and what was left was, oops we realized, find a place to stay that night. Finding a guy on the road (a broker probably) didn't take time though. He took us to a couple of places (imagine 6 in the car now) and we happened to like the first place we saw the best. A peaceful cottage somewhere inside. The third and fourth room in the cottage might be given to other tourists, the owner warned. But who cares. Got into a little of negotiations and stuff, formality sake since the rates he quoted anyway sounded OK. A cook who could take orders and make stuff for us made the place even more interesting. Ordered a lot of food, dumped the bags into the room, and set out for a short walk. A real peaceful place, I should say. At least during this time, which was not supposed to be 'season-time' there. Found an ATM on the way, none of us had a penny mind you. ATM was not crowded at all and no Q to get the money. It is good to take your own money without standing in Q, I realized.

Not much of shopping at this time since all the shops close 'early' during this season. Climate was superb, it should be close to 3 degrees is what we heard. 'It can go further down as mid-night approaches' the localities claimed. Got some local 'platform' shop selling some monkey-caps. Not that it was great but it seemed to be a fashion there. For 10 bucks, you don't expect some woolen cap anyway. Each one of us got one, and walked our way back to our cottage.

Food was ready by then, parked the car in a better place, it was a whole different experience trying to stuff the car into the so-called shed in a hill, really. Anyway that was done and food was great. But it was a long day, a sleepless previous night, long hours of drive, bad roads during the second half of the journey, and we were all dead tired. That doesn't mean we should sleep but we were more interested in the early-morning Ooty to catch the sunrise and decided to hit the sack.

Thick woolen blankets, warm inside the cottage, bloody tired we were, what more do you need. Off we went to sleep.

To be continued...