Ooty

Ooty has it all.....
Many of us love the hills; others find lakes very enchanting while some can’t resist the mystery of the jungles. An ideal place where you would find all the three would be Ooty. Throw in a charming heritage train trip and you have the perfect holiday!
This isn’t a travel guide, but just an impression of a sudden trip made to the much heard destination of Ooty
Located in the Nilgiri range of mountains, the greenery is striking in Ooty. I don't know why they call it the Nilgiris, they got the colour wrong because its incredibly green, as if the colour was carelessly left to spread and fill the canvas. It’s dotted with large number of lakes and waterfalls. There are miles and miles of fields with tea, spices and vegetables. Tall swaying Eucalyptus trees; the cool mountain climate. It’s the perfect place to spend a lazy day doing absolutely nothing.

Hotel Lake View
We stayed at hotel Lake View, which is like an artificial village with a cluster of small and cute cottages that are laid out on steps on a slope facing part of the Ooty Lake. They offer a fireplace at night which makes it so cozy and charming. The service isn’t very great, but the beauty of the place makes up for it.
Guided Tours

The best way to have a relaxing time in Ooty would be to go for unhurried long walks among the mountains and the trees. Taking the guided tourist bus is a mistake. The entire day you will be inhaling diesel smoke and looking at Ooty through dirty bus windows. They take away the pleasure of sight seeing. Every visit is extremely time bound and completely led by the tour agent. The urgency and sense of task added to the entire trip by the tourist guide, is disappointing. Unfortunately, every guided tour in India gives you the same experience.
If you can catch one of those ancient looking open ‘horse carriages’, it is quite romantic to ride around the lake. Sadly, these carriages including the animal and the carriage driver look pathetically poor and ill kept.
No Mall
The town lacks a ‘mall’. The Nilgiris are gentle undulating hills with wide valleys that offer plenty of flat terrain unlike some of the Himalayan hill stations. A promenade, with open air restaurants, flower beds, chocolate shops and tea kiosks selling the local produce would have made for a perfect mall! Instead the centre of the town has a very chaotic traffic junction, broken roads, crowded and unattractive shops. We could not locate a single restaurant where we could simply watch the place and have a sip of the local tea.
Flower Exhibition
There is an enclosed flower exhibition located opposite the Ooty Lake that looks promising. It proclaims to house flowers and plants made of thread, a unique work of imagination and skill. I expected to see something bright and colourful. Instead we were greeted into a dimly lit canvas tent with plants located so far from view that one actually needs a search light to be able to see or appreciate anything at all. There is a guide who narrates something in Tamil. You can at the most see the first two rows. Only when you bend doubly over the barrier and squint that you realize the hard work that has gone into creating some interesting pieces of display, though some are very garishly artificial. As you leave the tent there are some sample displays kept on a counter close enough to see the thread work but by then we were disgusted with the presentation.
Home-made chocolates
There are loads of home made chocolate shops in Ooty in different flavors (some very innovative), but frankly speaking I prefer Cadbury's Dairy Milk to any of the flavors that I tasted. I suppose there is a sense of romance and exclusivity added to these home grown chocolates and you need to develop a taste for it.
As lazy as the mountains….

Ooty is truly blessed with natural beauty, but I suppose we really aren't doing our best in either preserving the place or making it a good tourist destination. The best way to enjoy the Nilgiris would be to take a week off, be as lazy as the mountains and simply 'Be' in the place.