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Trip to Ooty

Apr 17, 2009 Photography, Travel

Lazinees in blogging

The last time i blogged about travel was in late may last year after my stavanger trip, although i have been traveling to a few places i havent found time to blog about my travel experiences. Here is the list that i have missed to blog about , Hyderabad Trip – Jun ‘08, ECR Trip – Aug ‘08, Coorg Trip – Oct ‘08, Pondy – Jan ‘09, Bangalore – Feb ‘09, Thiruvannamalai – Feb ‘09,  ECR Again- Apr ‘09 and now Ooty Apr ‘09. Coorg Trip was really amazing, more than 2000 kms of travel on bus during 5 days, I can only regret that i couldn’t manage the time to blog about that experience. Bangalore trip was highlighted by our lunch experience at Nandinee. All done and said, lets talk about this trip.

The plan.

Shetty  (quoted among one of the greatest civil engineers of all time for creating the plan and the arch. design to build a flyover between Gwalior and Chennai) now wanted to build a flyover between Chennai and Bangalore, and we wanted to find a place where we can plant the foundation stone. After rounds of meetings we finally decided that instead of starting the flyover construction from the ends, we will start it from the center, the center point being Ooty hill.

- If i didnt get kicked for this, then there is a serious problem out there… he he

The plan actually was because we had a long weekend, and we wanted to celebrate a few events. so we decided to ooty, as it happens with every travel plan involving me, we had nothing inplace until we started out for the trip. the only things that are confirmed with us are the return tickets from coimbatore to chennai on monday night.

Thrusday evening

4:00 PM at office, I start off to koyembedu, so that i can catch the bus, which praveen told me to be a super deluxe, i will try to post a photograph of the bus here. This is by no means a super-deluxe bus. When we were boarding the bus, joseph asked the conductor, if it was a video coach. The conductor replied to him saying that this is a video coach, but the passengers should bring their own TV’s, he was true, there was a tv provision, but no TV in it.

From Ooty Trip -Apr 2009 (Friends)

5:30 PM The bus starts off from bus stand.

7:30 PM The bus halted 45 Mins in pallavaram, due to a small accident.

9:30 PM The bus halted 1 hour due to noise in the Tyre, this is getting us frustrated now, first the bus, now the delays.

6:00 AM next day, the bus which is supposed to reach Coimbatore already, hasn’t even touched erode yet.

8:30 AM at last we are in Coimbatore

Friday Morning

After the breakfast we start off on our second phase of our journey, the uphill travel through the mountainous terrain of the nilgiris. But wait, this cannot be as smooth as expected. We get to the bus stand to catch our bus to Ooty, this is where we get our first shock, there is a queue, at least 150 Meters long, and people waiting for more than 1 hour at the first few places. Now we realized that this wont work out for us. We wanted to find a alternative, all my efforts of trying to book a bus through redbus.in were ineffective since, they didn’t cover that route.

Joseph came up with a idea to get to connoor and then to reach ooty from there. So we took a bus to connoor, this bus was terrible than the previous bus, the standards of buses are getting sicker and sicker.

From Ooty Trip -Apr 2009 (Friends)

After 90 mins on our travel and say 13 kms off Connor hill top, our bus breaks down. Then we say, wow, this is what we are waiting for . they funny thing is that once we get down form the bus, say 20 of us, the bus starts up, and the bus leaves us, we were under the assumption that the bus will stop somewhere near to pick us up, there was nothing to worry, since the conductor was walking with us. But the bus didn’t stop for say like the next 750 M / 1 Km. We were walking , walking , and walking… the shades gave us some relief, although the uphill climb and the reducing air density as we climb upwards were talking a heavy toll on us, and finally the bus reached connoor and then we took the next bus to Ooty.

Friday Afternoon

A bus from Connor drops us in ooty now, tired and restless, we have been traveling on road for more than 20 hours now. We dropped into to the hotel room, to take some rest.

Ooty

If we had to go by speculations climate in ooty during this time is supposed to be terrible , it was really bad during the second day, when it got hot upto 28~30 C. But teh first and third days were ok, it was cold enough for someone who came all the way from chennai.

From Ooty Trip -Apr 2009 (Friends)

We did a lot of sight seeing and shopping during the 3rd day. I will have to write a separate blog about that in case i had to explain the details. It was a nice weekend getaway to relax ourselves from the fast paced offices that we work for.

The Down Trip

The down trip was not as eventful and the upward trip, as we had confirmed ticket through the travel and we had already exhausted all our energies to take any risk. We traveled form Ooty to Coiambatore on Sunday evening, to reach Coiambatore on sunday night. One full day rest at koovai on monday and repeat biriyanis at koovai thalapakettu, had spoiled our plans to visit the koovai kutralam. We didn’t manage to acheive the core goal of the trip which is the treat from shetty. But nevertheless it was great fun we had during the four days.

Albums

Ooty Trip -Apr 2009 (Friends)

Ooty Trip -Apr 2009 (Photography)