A Road Trip to Ooty - Part III

Day - April 3, 2010.

Time - 9:00 AM

I, the laziest chap in the entire gang, got up at 8:30 AM. By the time I got up, Nilesh & Rajiv were done with their showers and ready for hitting the breakfast table hard. Tough luck guys, I was not done with my pre-breakfast activities! I rushed to the bathroom and had a quick shower followed by my regular puja. I was done by 9:30 AM. Mean while Nilesh & Rajiv passed their time pressing random buttons and operating the idiot box - sometimes news, sometimes some random songs or may be daily soap repeat telecasts.... whatever, they were just killing the time.

Once I was ready, we went downstairs to have our breakfast. The restaurant was quite crowded (and why not, it was a long week end!) and most of the tables were occupied by the time we reached - thanks to me! Although Nilesh and Rajiv didn't speak a word, it was quite understood! Rajiv was quite in a hurry to cover as much as we can and leave back for bangalore in the evening so that we can have a day's rest before we get back to work.

We occupied one of the vacant corner table which was big enough to accommodate 4 people. We made ourselves comfortable on the table and waited for the waiter to approach us. After some time one guy came and noted down our order. I and Rajiv ordered Aalu parantha that was served with toast and jam and freshly squeezed juice (all 3 of us ordered pineapple juice) followed by tea or coffee. Nilesh tried out the poori bhaaji for breakfast which was served with mint and coconut chutney and not to forget the freshly squeezed juice and toast/jam followed by the tea.

All 3 of us were quite hungry, especially me - since I missed yesterday's dinner. My stomach was demanding now :)

Soon we were done with our "complementary" breakfast. Aalu parantha sucked as there was only boiled potato stuffed in the parantha with no masala, but then rest of the things were good enough including the tea. Anyways, it was complementary :P

Once done with our breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and loaded our cab with our luggage. We decided that we were to leave by evening and reach Bangalore by late night so that we can have a day's rest and thus tried to save our upcoming week from getting screwed up.

We requested our cab driver to drive us to Coonoor as we didn't find much interesting places in Ooty. Coonoor is 18-20 km from Ooty; and we were correct. I found Coonoor blessed with much more natural beauty than Ooty. Ooty was kind of overcrowded. Coonoor too was crowded, but comparatively less. We started by around 10:00 AM in the morning and enjoyed our travel thoroughly. I & Nilesh sang full songs one after the other on a special request from Rajiv. He enjoyed our singing and we too had someone who was willfully interested in enduring our voices :D

While I was singing, Rajiv and Nilesh too contributed and the chorus was enjoying it :) The same was true when Nilesh started singing. We chained up and voluntarily picked up a song each one after the other and yeah, Rajiv got excited enough to pitch in and start singing although he didn't consider himself a great singer and partially he was correct as well, but as a chorus, we rocked.

The lush green forests and the cool weather (as we moved upwards) was good enough to rejuvenate us and our passion for travelling. After some time we reached Coonoor. Our driver had never came to Coonoor before, so we had to take intermediate halts and check with the locals. Communication was an issue for us, since the locals didn't understand Hindi and English and we didn't understand Tamil. Fortunately, our cab driver was a jack of all. He understood both Hindi and English "thoda thoda" (little bit). He somehow managed to convey the message in Tamil and understood the few things of what was conveyed and anyways, reaching Coonoor wasn't difficult as the road was pretty much straight forward with one or two turns. However, this issue cropped up during the sight seeing as there a better understanding of Tamil would have been more helpful.

Alright, so here we are in Coonoor - just besides the Sim's park. We planned to visit the following places in Coonoor.

1. Sim's Park
2. Lamb's Rock
3. Law's Falls
4. Catherine Falls
5. Dolphin's Nose

We were more interested in falls, so we requested our cab driver to take us to waterfalls. He asked some fellow driver about waterfalls and drove accordingly just to see that after driving some 10-15 kms, we were lost and had to return back to Sim's park. After one futile attempt, we asked one more person who was fortunately from Bangalore. He explained the route to our cab driver properly. There was a small and narrow road just few meters from Sim's park on the right hand side of the road, which we were supposed to follow.

Initially, I thought how could such a narrow road lead to well known places? It is not even well developed. But yes, it did. That was the correct path - I made a wrong assumption.

We first came across Lamb's rock which is nothing but a location from which one can see the surroundings very well. Most outlets around were providing some way to climb up the room and take a look at the mountains and peaks from there. So we didn't notice any rock as such. Actually, we didn't bother to stop here as we were interested in falls. We kept driving for another 15-20 km and we reached a traffic jam condition. After waiting for some 15-20 minutes, we proceeded ahead. After travelling for some more time, we parked our car aside, the way others did as it was not possible to drive due to the traffic and started walking instead. After walking for some 2/3 kms, we reached Dolphin Nose which is nothing but a point from where these falls - Law's falls and Catherine falls could be seen. Since the natural architecture creates a shape of Dolphin's Nose, the point is known as dolphin's nose point. We were a little disappointed since we wanted to see the falls, however upon inquiring of local shopkeepers we came to know that one of the falls had dirty water and one was too far to reach. So we had to drop the idea altogether.

We took some snaps there (not to mention again, how much I was missing my camera) and stayed for some time there exploring the surroundings and started our journey back towards sim's park.

Sim's park was a like any other park with multiple trees and flowers. However, it was comparatively bigger than normal parks. After spending some time in Sim's park we moved back towards Ooty. By the time we reached back it was almost 2 pm.

All of us were quite hungry when we reached Ooty. Too bad I don't even remember the name of the restaurant where we had food. However, I must appreciate the food was really nice (quite costly as well - by default :P). The restaurant was just next to Holiday Inn.

After we were done with the food, we enjoyed the ice-cream as our dessert. We visited two more places in Ooty before we started for our return journey.

1. Rose Garden
2. Botanical Garden.

Rose Garden visit disheartened us as there were hardly any roses. However, Botanical garden was quite nice and refreshing. It had a huge collection of different plants, flowers and trees with a big garden. As you move up the garden slowly and steadily the number of people decreases (at least we didn't find many!) and the atmosphere is cool and cozy.

Once done with these two places we geared up for the return journey. It was 5:30 pm I believe (if I am not wrong). We requested our cab driver to drive us back to Bangalore. We took our dinner @ same place - Dasaprakasham in Mysore and reached Bangalore by 00:30 AM. Instead of driving back to our place we instead decided to get down at Rajiv's place and cleared up the cab driver by giving him rest of the money and some tip :)

So yeah.... here we go - 3 Idiots back to Bangalore :P