During last Christmas holidays, I decided to drive down to Ooty, Mysore and Bangalore. I had been to Ooty about a decade back and read that it had kind of lost its charm now, however my wife wanted to visit this hill-station and I wanted to enjoy the drive - hence the trip!
How to Reach: From Goa, I headed via Hubli to NH-4 (Pune-Bangalore national highway), up to Tumkur. From Tumkur, headed to Mysore (we stayed a night in Mysore). Most people do Bangalore-Mysore and then Ooty.
Mysore-Ooty: This is a pleasure drive! From Mysore to Nanjangudu - Gudlupete, its normal state-highway road with some traffic. Then you pass through Bandipur National Sanctuary. The road is full of greenery, however a small single lane road, mostly broken at places, with lot of speed-breakers hence you have to always negotiate while giving sides to other vehicles etc. Here you will cross the Karnataka/TN state border and enter TN state. (No tolls/checks nothing).
After that there are two routes one can take, one which is via Masinagudi which is shorter, however with 36 hair-pin bends and which is the most interesting part of driving (for some). The other is a longer route with no such bends via Gudlur.
I did the first one!
36 Hair-pin bends: During my childhood trip to Ooty I had been a passenger in the car and this time I was on the wheels. I read few reviews about this route, some were scary while some gave proper instructions on how to drive, what precautions to take etc. Basically, this about 12-13 kms stretch of steep road, with 36 hair-pin bends, some scary & challenging, some simple. As the road cuts through the mountains, the temperature keeps falling and one starts becomes somewhat breathless even with some walking. I stopped on the way once, just to give some rest to the car engine and to let the tires cool down (the rubber burns extra due to continuous driving in 1st/2nd gear shift)(We drove in a Safari Storme).
All the bends are done some 15-20 mins and you feel nice once you are done with all of them. A few kms from there you reach the main town.
City: Yes, the place is nice and yes its a lot commercialized. You would see, ads saying welcome to Nilgiris, keep it clean etc. The first thing you notice are the crowded concrete buidings - restaurants, guest houses, shops - it clearly shows that all people want here is to make money from the tourism industry. Weather is a huge plus. The day temprature was pretty soothing and pleasant with plenty of sunlight, however the same started falling down as the sun set and reached below 10 degrees in the night. The town starts shutting down by 7-8 pm, make sure you have your dinner done by then.
Anything to shop for?Yes, Eucalyptus oil, local home-made chocolates, woolen wear, Tea powder, soaps, spices etc. Try eating raw reddish carrots sold at the road-side. Chocolates were a disappointment as they tasted the likes of normal dairy milk/milky-bar. Tea powder also same story - (not sure if this was because we brought them from the shops near famous tourist spots) - we brought a Ginger tea powder - utter hopeless! Also, note the minimum packet available is 250gms. They don’t sell any 100 gms packets as we wanted to buy 100gms each of Apple Tea, Ginger Tea, Masala tea etc.
What to see/do? Like all tourists do, I had listed few places to visit while in Ooty (I have mentioned below in short few tips about them, will write separate detailed reviews about them)
1. Botanical Garden: Hopeless, there is nothing to see or do here, except lying around and taking walks.
2. Ooty Lake: Nice for boating and has variety of other games/events to do like Bumping cars.
3. Dodabetta peak: for spectacular view of valley.
4. Coonor: Take Ooty-Coonor (station name- Udhagamandalam) toy train, about 1 hr journey, can alternatively do by road(19-20kms). Nice travel through scenic hills and clouds. You can visit Sims Park and’Dolphin’ nose point (we didn’t do them).
5. Rose Garden: Again, nothing much, heard its best during April when the roses bloom.
6. Pykara Lake - Beautiful scenery all around the lake.
Where to stay? Plenty of options and I don’t think one needs a reservation(Dec is kind of off season, though we saw a lot of tourists around). We went without any prior reservation and on a friend’s suggestion, stayed at a placed called Manthada, 4 kms from away from the main town - which was an excellent places to stay (read review here: https://mouthshut.com/review/Divine-Hiland-Ooty-review-rumtqptqmu)
All in all, agreed Ooty is kind of losing its sheen but one can surely enjoy the weather (I heard Munnar is picking up as alternative now).