Last week (jan26) I went to ooty and stayed in Hotel Lake View. I searched so much in net but didn’t find good articles about the cost of stay in ooty and places to visit. So here is my experience. May be useful to the people who are going first time. and iam sure this article is not useful who has already visited ooty.As they can judge by themself.
I started from Bangalore around morning 5am and reached Mysore by 8am, took a diversion towards ooty avoiding Mysore city traffic. From there it is single high way road (road is good) and reached bandipur forest. In my entire journey I liked driving through bandipur. Found 8 to 9 spotted deers while going and 2 elephants and 20 deers when coming. After reaching gudalur we have two options to reach ooty.one is 36Km to ooty and is very narrow having 36 hairpin bends. And the other road is 62Km to ooty in that around 40Km road is worst. So while going I chose first option but when coming took the second option. In that way we can cover both site seeing places on the way. We reached ooty by 1pm and took room in Hotel Lake View.
About Lake View:
I can’t tell room is too good. But it is ok. They have 123 independent cottages. So you can feel like you are staying at your home. The first thing I like is we can park our car in front of our cottage. It has two rooms. With attached bath. They provided dining table in first room and bed in the second room. We tried food at the restaurant on the first day. Felt so bad. Not worthy to have food there and not tasty also. Whether is too cool, unable to put our feet on floor. Too chilled, hotel room doesn’t have heater. Room rent is Rs.880 including service tax. Still I like because of independent cottages.
Experience in Ooty:
There are around 8places to visit.
1) Ooty Lake along with park, go carting etc..
2) Botanical garden
3) Rose garden
4)Film shooting location and payakar water falls (both you can visit when coming back through gudalur).
5)Some view point (you can see while going through narrow road to ooty).
Homemade chocolates are available in most of the stores. If you find shop in isolated place price will be less. Main centre in ooty is “Charring Cross”. Parked car and spent 4 hours in the evening cool weather. It is better to carry jacket along with you.
Conoor is around 18Km from ooty. It has 5 to 6places to visit.
1)Sims park
2)Sleeping lady
3)Lambs rock
4)Tea plantation and tea factory
5)Falls
Experience in tea plantation and factory is good as it is first time I have visited. Remaining places are OK to visit. Road is too narrow. Started from conoor by 3pm and reached Bangalore by 12pm.
As per my experience two days are sufficient to spent in ooty. 3 days are more than enough. Overall expenditure may come to Rs6000-8000 for 3 days and 2 nights including 45Lts of petrol. Iam suggesting for the people who want to spent more time in city or who are planning for 2 days trip should stay in hotels near “charring cross”. Because frankly speaking nothing is there in ooty other than “cool weather and charring cross junction”.
So if I go next time I will stay in conoor rather than ooty.
Cheers,
Vijay.