“Ooty” is short for Udagamandalam… and it’s my favorite town name in India because it rhymes with booty😳

No judgment zone. After Munnar, I took local buses to Coimbatore (and got attacked by a monkey). The trip was 3 buses + 1 tuk-tuk, and it took around 7 hours. I was only in Coimbatore for one night, using that as a stopping point on my way to Ooty, which is north of Munnar, in Tamil Nadu state. Ooty and Munnar are fairly similar – they’re both in the Western Ghat mountains, they both have tea plantations covering the landscape, and they’re both beautiful😍.

I got a non-A/C taxi to take me from Coimbatore to Ooty because I didn’t want a second day in a row of local bus travel on windy, bumpy roads! Ooty is in the Nilgiri Hills (“nilgiri” means “blue mountain”), and the climate changes quite a bit from Mettupalayam, which is at the foothills, to the hill stations at the top. When I was in the taxi in Mettupalayam, sitting in traffic, I think it was the hottest I’ve ever felt (excluding being in a sauna or exercising)… it was ridiculous. But, for Ooty, the high temperature for the days I was there was 75, and the low was in the 50’s at night. It was sunny and beautiful all day, both days I was there😄 Perfect weather. It doesn’t rain hardly at all in Ooty in February, but during the June-July-+ months, it will rain a lot – for hours and hours non-stop – so I randomly visited at a really good time.

Pictures of Ooty town and area around…

Ooty building

cafe coffee!!

This is where I stayed – soooo cute, with the cutest family running the place…

I visited the Botanical Garden, Ooty Lake, and a tea factory (again)…

The cooooolest thing I did was ride the Nilgiri Mountain Railway (steam locomotive! toy train) from Ooty back to Mettupalayam. When going downhill, it starts at 7,200 feet and ends at 1,070. The stations are used for a lot of movie filming, including scenes shot in the original A Passage to India film. The train system is a UNESCO World Heritage Site – it was first used in 1899. The views are AMAZING…

my little friend

Next up: India’s east coast