On the morning of the 26th of September, my host family and I woke up early for the puja holidays. It was Saturday, and the first of the two puja holiday days. Because of this, my host father's company had pujas in each one of the many factories around India- we spent the morning driving around Coimbatore and it's outskirts to attend a total of seven pujas before we picked up my host mother's sister's family and all drove up the mountain to Ooty, a hill station! The drive up took about two hours and was possibly the MOST beautiful drive! We drove straight up and around the tall, jagged and green mountains, passing groups of small grey monkeys sitting at the sides of the roads and sometimes even darting across! The hills around us were covered in lush green plants, tea plantations, vegetable gardens, and SO many tropical flowers! We passed several smaller cities on our way up, all of which were clustered in little groups on the sides of the giant hills, with long brown staircases leading down to the vast valleys below where they keep the vegetable gardens.
We reached the top of the mountain and were in Ooty around 5:00 p.m. We had lunch at a little hotel before driving out to the lake to walk around the boat house! It was just starting to get dark when we reached the water, but it was a wonderful sight! There was lots of little paddle boats out on the water, horse back riders on the roads, and there was even some carnival rides! We walked down to the water and took a few photos. My camera ran out of battery here :(
We spent the night going on a few of the rides that were by the water. My host mother's nephews and I had fun going on a spinning ride and then on the bumper cars! We finished that part of the evening with a little shopping at some road side shops before heading into the city for some real shopping. The sky was dark, and Ooty was surprisingly FREEZING to me! I had been told that the weather there is cooler, but I wore a big jacket the whole time! Even later that night after dinner when we arrived at the cottage we were staying in we were all cold! I ended up sleeping in the jacket....
We woke up the next morning early and had some tea in the crisp mountain air, watching as thick clouds of fog rolled in in the valley below us, before we all got back into the car and drove down the mountain towards our next destination: Mysore.
3 comments:
Seems like u had a lot of fun...i remember u saying that u wanted to take a ride on an elephant...u could have taken that ride in Ooty...
Very descriptive Madison. It sounds like a mixture of India, Greece and Italy with the villages on the hill (like I would know...).
An elephant ride would be special! You should try it when you go back this week. Charge the batteries!!
Glad to hear you're having the best times. We're just twiddling our thumbs, doing homework, pulling weeds and watching the dogs sniff their territory. Don't hurry back :) - Dad
Wow! Ooty! How lucky you are. I've never been there, and would like to go. sigh...
The only mountainy place we've been to in south India is Thekkady, in Kerala, 12 years ago. Yes, the same place that had the boat tragedy a couple of days ago. Horrible event! How sad.
We've seen lots of monkeys in various places. Many species, but the ones we've encountered seem to fall into two broad categories — cute little guys that might eat from your hand in touristy places, or else big, ugly, mean and scary ones that intimidate people, sometimes found outside temples. They're revered enough (think: Hanuman) to get away with unsociable behavior. :O
Your blog is making my life here seem very dull. But maybe not quite as dull as your dad's sounds. hehehe ;D
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