Ooty - Beauty, Tea and Spooky!
In July, my husband and I took off for a holiday to Ooty (Udhagamund). I had seen countless Hindi film songs picturised in the Nilgiris and known of innumerable newly married couples romancing in the boats of the Ooty Lake. And this was the first time I was going there.
Our flight landed at Coimbatore and we found the car we had hired, waiting to take us to Ooty. The 3 hour drive was full of dangerous turns, some charming landscape and bright green tea plantations.Was it beautiful?! Yes, it was! And with the beauty, was a chill in the strong winds that were accompanied by the scent of the eucalyptus.
We reached the Taj and were warmly welcomed with fresh grape juice. A cottage, more than 150 years old was where we were led by the hotel staff. The colonial structure that stood in front of us looked very inviting. Once inside, it was as though we had been transported to the last century. Wooden flooring, a huge fireplace, watercolour paintings, antique furniture and a cozy foyer with two comfortable chairs and a tea kettle.
In the evening we made ourselves hot cups of tea. Drinking tea from the land where it grows was simply magical! Night time, we lit up the fire place as it was extremely chilly. There was so much of enchantment that we were experiencing here. The only drawback in Ooty was the food. We gobbled up a lot of breakfast from the large spread that Taj had to offer so as to avoid having lunch. Baked beans, toast, dry fruits, fresh fruits, juices, milk, tea, coffee, cornflakes, buns and butter, cakes and cookies, boiled egg, fried egg, scrambled egg or any egg that one wanted, idli, dosa, lemon rice, tamarind rice and many more things that I fail to remember. I call it the 'Breakfast of the Lords' that was fortunately included in our stay package.
After consuming all this, we were hungry again at lunch time. No, we're not hogs! It had to be the climate. We started our hunt for a decent place where we could eat, as at Taj we would be spending more than Rs.500 on just one vegetable serving!
We had lunch at a restaurant whose name I don't remember. The food there was quite alright. Nothing like what I had expected. On our way back to the Taj, we chanced upon a Cafe' Coffee Day. It was a wonderful feeling - looking at the hills and the light drizzle through the long transparent windows at CCD and sipping our steaming coffee and hot chocolate. We relaxed there reading some lastest magazines and observing the inhabitants of the many high class boarding schools discussing studies over a cup of coffee. As the tagline for Cafe' Coffee Day goes - 'A lot a happen over a cup of coffee'!
Back at the hotel, we snoozed for an hour and decided to discover Ooty on foot. My husband put on his jacket and I put on a pullover, a jacket and woollen socks and ventured out in the cold and rainy Ooty evening with an umbrella that we picked at the reception.
On our way, we came across schools that were built by the British - with brick red buildings and large iron gates. Most of the buildings were painted red. Including the Higgin & Botham's bookstore that we visited. This bookstore was started during the time when India was ruled by the British and Ooty was a getaway hillstation that matched the climate of London. The 'goras' read a lot of books it seems! The other colonial structures around serve as Government quaters presently.
Just a little further, I saw some lights under the road where we were walking. That meant that we were on a hill and there was a way to the road that we saw. We went in the direction of the lights and to our surprise, found the Ooty market right below and a small little, slippery stone staircase led us there. We went into a wholesale shop that was barely lit and a middle aged lady asked us what we wanted to buy. We bought bottles of Eucalyptus oil to gift our family members. On our way out, we asked the fruit vendor the price of apples. The cost was the same as it was back home.
It was late evening by the time we had finished looking around, we were extremely hungry. My husband recollected the name of a hotel that he had visited a few years back where he had had the typical South Indian meal. It was called Hotel Tamil Nadu. We somehow managed to find this place. It was a fairly big building, with very sober exteriors. It looked like a very affordable place to stay. No wonder we saw many white skinned people stacked in there.
The reception area was devoid of any glamour. Just some garish paintings, plastic flowers pots and a plain table with a very plain man behind it. We asked him the way to the restaurant and he directed us to go straight through the corridor and take the staircase at the end of it. The musty smelling, dimly lit corridor was rather long with the yellow paint on the walls peeling off and lizards all over, the grilled windows giving a view of the wild, untended garden. My husband found this place looking quite eerie. Our thought frequency was in synch. It did look scary. But a hungry stomach was victorious over a fearful mind!
We took the staircase and reached the 1st floor. Right in front of us was the door to the bar that opened and a stout dark, red eyed man in a white shirt popped out. We asked him the way to the restaurant and he guided us, speaking in a typical South Indian accent. We climbed one more floor and saw a sign painted on the lobby wall saying - 'Restaurant'.
A long walk in yet another spooky corridor and we reached the room finally. It was an apology to a restaurant. A large room with no soul around, just some tables and chairs and one small cashier counter. Suddenly from a room inside that looked like the kitchen, the same dark man with the white shirt who met us on the first floor emerged. "Yes sir, please sit." How did he manage to come up so fast when he was in the bar downstairs? Was there some secret staircase that joined the bar to the kitchen or was this man a ghost? His eyes were bloodshot red and all this was making me a little tensed. I started chanting the Gayatri Mantra. God, please keep my husband and me safe!!
The man gave us a menu card and my husband ordered for 2 South Indian meals and a glass of beer. The food was presented to us in record time. We asked the man if there was anyone at all who frequented this place. Just then a young couple entered the restaurant and then I felt a little relaxed. So there were other people here. Surely this place couldn't be haunted! Hubby dear chose not to finish his beer as he didn't want to get high. We finished with our meals and were surprised that we had to pay only Rs.30/- for two very filling meal plates. We reached the hotel safely and got the fireplace in our cottage lit up as the chill in the night was even more. With the crackling sound of burning wood, we fell into deep sleep.
Hotel Tamil Nadu fed us lunch again the next day and it turned out to be our messiah where good food was concerned! From a ghost to a messiah!! But dinner had to be somewhere else. We refused to go to that eerie looking retaurant at night time. My husband showed me a Chinese restaurant down the road and we decided we would try it out. The place was called 'Shinkows'- it's signboard painted in red and the lettering very Chinese in character.
Once inside, we realised that Shinkows was the most 'happening' restaurant in Ooty with all the foreigners and fellow Taj boarders around us. Also, there were the locals having a chit-chat over some drinks. The place was crowed, dimly lit with tables covered with red and white checkhed cloth. Everyone was wearing a shawl or a muffler. The cold weather made us want to have some steaming soup. A Kashmiri looking man came to our table handing us a menu card, a pen and something that looked like a bill book saying, "Fill in your order, please." This was funny! We had never come across any restaurant where no one took the order. We had to see the menu card, choose the item number alongside the dish we wanted, write it on the book and give it back to that man. Small towns, small quirks!
We had a sumptuous Chinese meal and bid farewell to Shinkows. We started to walk towards the hotel as there were no rickshaws in sight. The chill was turning my face cold. My nose had gone red and become runny. I covered my face with the shawl I was carrying. My husband put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm. After walking some distance, we found a rickshaw that drove us speedily against the icy winds towards the hotel.
In our short little trip to the breathtakingly beautiful Nilgiris, we managed to visit the extremely impressive and well-pruned Botanical Gardens, the Rose garden with over a thousand variety of roses named after famous personalities, the St. Stephen's Church that has pillars from Tipu Sultan's palace and finally the Doddabetta Peak, the highest point of Tamil Nadu.
Only when we saw the newspaper next morning did we realise that when we were at the Doddabetta peak, it had been the coldest day in the weather records!
Even if it's indirect, we did become a part of news in Ooty. I wish from my heart that I get a chance to visit this heaven again. Hubby dear, are you reading this?!
Our flight landed at Coimbatore and we found the car we had hired, waiting to take us to Ooty. The 3 hour drive was full of dangerous turns, some charming landscape and bright green tea plantations.Was it beautiful?! Yes, it was! And with the beauty, was a chill in the strong winds that were accompanied by the scent of the eucalyptus.
We reached the Taj and were warmly welcomed with fresh grape juice. A cottage, more than 150 years old was where we were led by the hotel staff. The colonial structure that stood in front of us looked very inviting. Once inside, it was as though we had been transported to the last century. Wooden flooring, a huge fireplace, watercolour paintings, antique furniture and a cozy foyer with two comfortable chairs and a tea kettle.In the evening we made ourselves hot cups of tea. Drinking tea from the land where it grows was simply magical! Night time, we lit up the fire place as it was extremely chilly. There was so much of enchantment that we were experiencing here. The only drawback in Ooty was the food. We gobbled up a lot of breakfast from the large spread that Taj had to offer so as to avoid having lunch. Baked beans, toast, dry fruits, fresh fruits, juices, milk, tea, coffee, cornflakes, buns and butter, cakes and cookies, boiled egg, fried egg, scrambled egg or any egg that one wanted, idli, dosa, lemon rice, tamarind rice and many more things that I fail to remember. I call it the 'Breakfast of the Lords' that was fortunately included in our stay package.
After consuming all this, we were hungry again at lunch time. No, we're not hogs! It had to be the climate. We started our hunt for a decent place where we could eat, as at Taj we would be spending more than Rs.500 on just one vegetable serving!
We had lunch at a restaurant whose name I don't remember. The food there was quite alright. Nothing like what I had expected. On our way back to the Taj, we chanced upon a Cafe' Coffee Day. It was a wonderful feeling - looking at the hills and the light drizzle through the long transparent windows at CCD and sipping our steaming coffee and hot chocolate. We relaxed there reading some lastest magazines and observing the inhabitants of the many high class boarding schools discussing studies over a cup of coffee. As the tagline for Cafe' Coffee Day goes - 'A lot a happen over a cup of coffee'!Back at the hotel, we snoozed for an hour and decided to discover Ooty on foot. My husband put on his jacket and I put on a pullover, a jacket and woollen socks and ventured out in the cold and rainy Ooty evening with an umbrella that we picked at the reception.
On our way, we came across schools that were built by the British - with brick red buildings and large iron gates. Most of the buildings were painted red. Including the Higgin & Botham's bookstore that we visited. This bookstore was started during the time when India was ruled by the British and Ooty was a getaway hillstation that matched the climate of London. The 'goras' read a lot of books it seems! The other colonial structures around serve as Government quaters presently.Just a little further, I saw some lights under the road where we were walking. That meant that we were on a hill and there was a way to the road that we saw. We went in the direction of the lights and to our surprise, found the Ooty market right below and a small little, slippery stone staircase led us there. We went into a wholesale shop that was barely lit and a middle aged lady asked us what we wanted to buy. We bought bottles of Eucalyptus oil to gift our family members. On our way out, we asked the fruit vendor the price of apples. The cost was the same as it was back home.
It was late evening by the time we had finished looking around, we were extremely hungry. My husband recollected the name of a hotel that he had visited a few years back where he had had the typical South Indian meal. It was called Hotel Tamil Nadu. We somehow managed to find this place. It was a fairly big building, with very sober exteriors. It looked like a very affordable place to stay. No wonder we saw many white skinned people stacked in there.
The reception area was devoid of any glamour. Just some garish paintings, plastic flowers pots and a plain table with a very plain man behind it. We asked him the way to the restaurant and he directed us to go straight through the corridor and take the staircase at the end of it. The musty smelling, dimly lit corridor was rather long with the yellow paint on the walls peeling off and lizards all over, the grilled windows giving a view of the wild, untended garden. My husband found this place looking quite eerie. Our thought frequency was in synch. It did look scary. But a hungry stomach was victorious over a fearful mind!
We took the staircase and reached the 1st floor. Right in front of us was the door to the bar that opened and a stout dark, red eyed man in a white shirt popped out. We asked him the way to the restaurant and he guided us, speaking in a typical South Indian accent. We climbed one more floor and saw a sign painted on the lobby wall saying - 'Restaurant'.
A long walk in yet another spooky corridor and we reached the room finally. It was an apology to a restaurant. A large room with no soul around, just some tables and chairs and one small cashier counter. Suddenly from a room inside that looked like the kitchen, the same dark man with the white shirt who met us on the first floor emerged. "Yes sir, please sit." How did he manage to come up so fast when he was in the bar downstairs? Was there some secret staircase that joined the bar to the kitchen or was this man a ghost? His eyes were bloodshot red and all this was making me a little tensed. I started chanting the Gayatri Mantra. God, please keep my husband and me safe!!
The man gave us a menu card and my husband ordered for 2 South Indian meals and a glass of beer. The food was presented to us in record time. We asked the man if there was anyone at all who frequented this place. Just then a young couple entered the restaurant and then I felt a little relaxed. So there were other people here. Surely this place couldn't be haunted! Hubby dear chose not to finish his beer as he didn't want to get high. We finished with our meals and were surprised that we had to pay only Rs.30/- for two very filling meal plates. We reached the hotel safely and got the fireplace in our cottage lit up as the chill in the night was even more. With the crackling sound of burning wood, we fell into deep sleep.
Hotel Tamil Nadu fed us lunch again the next day and it turned out to be our messiah where good food was concerned! From a ghost to a messiah!! But dinner had to be somewhere else. We refused to go to that eerie looking retaurant at night time. My husband showed me a Chinese restaurant down the road and we decided we would try it out. The place was called 'Shinkows'- it's signboard painted in red and the lettering very Chinese in character.
Once inside, we realised that Shinkows was the most 'happening' restaurant in Ooty with all the foreigners and fellow Taj boarders around us. Also, there were the locals having a chit-chat over some drinks. The place was crowed, dimly lit with tables covered with red and white checkhed cloth. Everyone was wearing a shawl or a muffler. The cold weather made us want to have some steaming soup. A Kashmiri looking man came to our table handing us a menu card, a pen and something that looked like a bill book saying, "Fill in your order, please." This was funny! We had never come across any restaurant where no one took the order. We had to see the menu card, choose the item number alongside the dish we wanted, write it on the book and give it back to that man. Small towns, small quirks!We had a sumptuous Chinese meal and bid farewell to Shinkows. We started to walk towards the hotel as there were no rickshaws in sight. The chill was turning my face cold. My nose had gone red and become runny. I covered my face with the shawl I was carrying. My husband put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm. After walking some distance, we found a rickshaw that drove us speedily against the icy winds towards the hotel.
In our short little trip to the breathtakingly beautiful Nilgiris, we managed to visit the extremely impressive and well-pruned Botanical Gardens, the Rose garden with over a thousand variety of roses named after famous personalities, the St. Stephen's Church that has pillars from Tipu Sultan's palace and finally the Doddabetta Peak, the highest point of Tamil Nadu.
Only when we saw the newspaper next morning did we realise that when we were at the Doddabetta peak, it had been the coldest day in the weather records!
Even if it's indirect, we did become a part of news in Ooty. I wish from my heart that I get a chance to visit this heaven again. Hubby dear, are you reading this?!
Comments
This article is a beautifully written. I lived in Ooty for a longtime. You just took me there. :)
Regards...