Weekend trip to Ooty (Day 1)

We had a three day weekend so a few of us decided to go down to Ooty for a nice little vacation. It takes about three and a half hours to get there from Mysore. The ride over wasn't too bad at all, we stopped at this restaurant and I ate some south indian food on a banana leaf. Our main goal for this trip was to take this special train that goes from a town called mettupalayam (at the bottom of the mountain) up to Ooty (at the top of the mountain). The scenery along the way is supposed to be amazing. Since there was more to do in Ooty than Mettupalayam, we figured we'd take the train down from Ooty to Mettuplayam first and then just take the train back up to Ooty.

When we were almost to Ooty our drivers took us to a nice scenic spot almost at the top of the hill where Ooty was. There were numerous valleys and all sorts of foliage visible from up there. We took a little trail down to a small waterfall. The rain had been falling recently so all the flowers were covered in rain drops, they made for beautiful pictures. We walked around the stream that was formed by the waterfall and took in the scenery for a while. When we were heading back to the cars the fog started rolling in. Everything slowly started getting covered by a thick cloud, it seemed like the view opened only for us to see, and now that we were leaving the scenery was going back into hiding.

When we got to Ooty we decided to pay a visit to the train station to book the tickets. Unfortunately, all the seats for the train we wanted were completely booked. So with a little disappointment, we decided to plan some other way for us to take the train. We decided we'd stay in Ooty and see the rest of the town that day, and the next day, sunday, we'd get our drivers to drive us to Coonoor (half-way down the mountain) and from there we could take the train back up to Ooty.

So next we decided to find a place to stay. We had heard about a nice, easy on the wallet place called Refelections. We told our drivers to take us there and they seem peculiarly adamant on taking us to this other hotel. We had the number for the place so the driver said he would call them and see if they have vacancy. He stepped out of the car to make the call, which I thought was a little weird. The driver came back and said there was no vacancy at the place. Rizwan, another guy from the U.S. batch on the trip, suggested we called the place for ourselves and see what's up. We did that and the lady on the phone told me our driver had called and asked if they give commission to drivers for bringing passengers there. The place didn't give commission to drivers and so the driver had told us they were booked, so we'd go to the other hotel where they did give commission. So after unsuccessfully trying to make a quick buck at our expense, the driver took us to the place we wanted to go.

Reflections is a pretty decent place. It's cheap so it's no five star hotel, but it's a nice hostel kind of environment where they make breakfast for you in the morning. We went in and dropped our stuff off. After that we decided to grab some food. We ate at a place called "The Sidewalk Cafe". The food was excellent, it was recommended by the travel book we had. The only problem was I didn't get my food until everyone else was done eating! Afterwards we went to a place called Doddabetta. It means "Big Mountain" according to a nearby sign. It is the highest peak in all of south india. The view from up there was great, we could see all of Ooty down below. We met these guys that were all dressed in matching bright yellow jackets, we dubbed them the Indian N'Sync and decided that we had to take a picture with them. (check out the photos on picasa)

We had heard from some guys that went to Ooty the week before that the tea factory there was pretty cool so we decided to check it out. They had a little exhibit there that talked about the history of tea and then they took us on a tour of the factory and showed us how they made the tea. The tea leaves are dried and then grounded up and processed through a bunch of machines before the tea is bagged and ready to sell. At the end of the tour they gave us a taste of the tea and they had a small shop where they sold all kinds of tea. They sold white tea there, I might have to go back in buy some before I leave India.

After the tea factory we decided to do some shopping. We found a store where they sold knock-off U.S. college sweatshirts. They had Virginia Tech, Ohio State, and a bunch of others. They didn't have any Maryland though, I would've definitely bought one. We walked around the town for a bit and went to dinner. I wasn't feeling very well for some reason that evening. I felt like I was getting a fever but I couldn't really tell. After dinner we were all pretty exhausted so we went back to the hotel to sleep.

There were a lot of foreigners at the place we were staying at, so when we got back there were a lot of people just sitting outside talking. We joined them for a while and got to know them a little. One of the guys is from Boston and he's working in India for a real estate company. The other people worked for the same company but were from Europe.

We stayed up until around 10 or 11 (ooo rebels, I know) and decided to call it a night. The bed was really uncomfortable though, but I was tired enough not to mind it.