On the train! finally!

For a long time I have been wanting to go on a ride in the train from Ooty to Metupalyam. Finally my best friend form high school and me decide to do it! It’s off season now and not many tourists. Its too cold in Ooty and we both have cough! Still, we decide to go ahead. We take a late night bus from Bengalooru to Ooty. The road is bad and we were very lucky to have got the last (read most bumpy) seats in the bus. After nice good tossing about we reach Bandipur at the foot of the hills of Ooty at 3 in the morning. From then on I was awake with my eyes glued to the window (I wish I could open these sealed windows for better clarity) looking out and hoping to catch a glimpse of a wild tiger… and I got to see only Deer! Still, it was good fun, catching glimpses of these in the little light that the bus cast on the road, almost a silhouette. By 5 we were on the peaks. The mist was so thick that visibility was just a few feet. Finally as we reached Ooty the lakes and mountains were smoking, the mist rising as the early morning bright sun kissed it. Beautiful…

We took a room, cleaned and changed and set out on a walking trip round Ooty. We sat at a roadside tea stall and sipped some very beautifully colored but quite bland Ooty tea and walked toward the botanical garden. It was not the flowering season and so we just go an eyeful of green green mountainside. After a few hours of walking in the gardens we headed for lunch. On the way we bought tones of home made chocolates, flowers, yummy green Ooty apples and a pair of Caps – really cheap there ;). After lunch at a nice Bengalooru based restaurant we strolled back hand in hand to the hotel, checked out and headed to the railway station.

The train arrived and thanks to good crowd handling skills, managed to get window seats! The really really slow journey downhill began. Midway, the engines were changed and we were then tugging along with old old steam engine! Super cool! For the next 2 hours or so we were among lush greenery misty mountains, clouds, beautiful tea estates, lovely old railways stations, flowers along the tracks, black tunnels, bridges over deep gorges, tiny waterfalls, some almost next to the tracks and lots of coal dust and smoke! I am so glad we don’t have steam engines any more, they are so polluting! If this tiny engine generates so much smoke, I cannot imagine the big bad ones. Every time we go through a tunnel, I feel like an insect being fumigated! Over all, the ride was amazing! It ended at Metupalyam were we went on to Tirupur to meet my friend’s dad…