Escape to Ooty

Well, after a turbulent start to the New Year I couldn’t wait to get myself out of Bangalore. Things change with time, but its ability to cope with change which is tested. As with most of my outings rarely do, I end up planning. Within 3 hours of me landing in Coimbatore, the plan for two day outing to Ooty was already chartered out by my friends. The next day we started early by 7 30 am to Ooty. Here I need to make a word of caution about our chauffeur; He basically thinks he is Michael Schumacher’s prodigy. People normally speed up when the highways are free. But he was traveling at 140km/h in road in between the forests. I knew something was going to go wrong, when I saw the speedometer. As it turned out, a poor deer took the wrong moment to cross the roads, it tried to squirt its way across the road, as we were moving. I thought the deer may not make it across the road, but it may end up in heaven for sure. But Luckily thanks to some superb Scorpio braking, the deer was able to cheat death (Thank God for those Scorpio brakes). Not the greatest of starts to the journey, midway through I knew something was wrong. The weird feeling was getting stronger with every hairpin bend we took. Finally in 4th one I had to take a call from one of my friends, as soon as I finished the call, I knew it was coming out. A bang on the door ensured the car was stopped and I rushed out to puke. Not a pretty site, when you have to go, you have to let it go. Another hour we finally reached Ooty. We managed to get some well deserved rest thanks to our friend’s guest house.


It was time for some sight seeing after we had a pretty good lunch. I knew there was going to be more hairpin bends to contend, so my lunch was basically a lip service. Couple of my friends never realized the meaning of it. A half hour into travel for Pykara Lake it was their turn to puke. At last after a lot of puking we got down at lake for much warranted Sight seeing and Photo shooting. I am used to seeing girls Bangalore wearing outrageous dresses in office and malls , but one of the girls t-shirt had the following saying on it “Twin Towers” , of course there was her beau near. (Poor him, God only knows who is going to ram the Twin Towers with a plane!). We further traveled to Dodabetta after it. Its like at the junction of Eastern Ghats and Western Ghats, makes a good sight. Provided you don’t have fog, you’ll be able to see most of Ooty. Then it was time for leisurely boat ride, took a couple of great pics here. We decided to call it a day and returned to house. I decided to wash my face after returning home, but only problem you’re hand literally started to freeze when you poured water over it. I had to rush to another room, kept my hand near the heater for 5 mins to warm it up again. It was dinner time, there was a good restaurant near by where you could order food to your house, but decided to eat out at the restaurant rather than eat at home. It was bloody cold when we ventured out, but what surprised me was the food my friend ordered. Let me list it out 10 chappati’s , 10 Parotta’s , 3 Fried Rice’s, 2 Plates of Chilly Chicken, 2 Plates of Pepper Chicken, 2 Plates of Kadai Chicken Gravy, 2 Plates of egg gravy ( Huff , I am at last done ). This was for just 6 people; personally I couldn’t go beyond 2 Chappati’s and a Parotta. Most of the food was going to be wasted, so we decided to pack it, so that we could warm the food and eat them in morning. And we weren’t done yet, probably we were the only people in the restaurant to order ice cold Limca after eating all of this in that coldness of Ooty (after affects of which I am feeling as throat pain now).

Finally it was time for camp fire, to warm up ourselves with some foot tapping music in the middle of night, played some cards and drifted of into sleep. There was another college group who also had camp fire opposite to ours. It would have been better, if we could have joined them, things would have really spiced up. I got up real early next morning with birds chirping, clear sunshine with a mountainous background, perfect wallpaper material. Though we had a solar heater, it was like name sake, because the water literally turned cold within mins from the tap. Taking bath in that cold water is one experience you’re not going to forget. We had more of sight seeing with monkeys (I always manage to find them, no matter what) and deers. Now I need to say about return journey, the normal duration of travel from Ooty to Coimbatore is 3 hours. But the bet was for our chauffeur to get us down within 2 hrs. Well, I have played NFS drift, but to experience it in reality is a whole another thing. We took a Hairpin bend at 100 km/h. I was in the front seat; my heart was in my mouth for the all 14 hair pin bends. That was the first time in my life; I started wearing seat belt out of fear of safety. And to make matters worse, my friend said he was going to puke, while we were caught in a middle of traffic jam. The worst case scenario of puking inside the car happened, since my chauffeur was unable to maneuver out of traffic jam. After that we basically need to clean up the car. ( Though my friend was like , I haven’t puked since drinking Vodka in 3rd yr, I wasn’t amused) . Another half an hour I finally reached home, thoroughly exhausted; But it was well deserved escape to Ooty away from the hectic Bangalore life. Last but no the least, We did manage to reach Coimbatore in 1hr 55 mins.!!

(PS: A girl who was at the back of my seat while I was traveling from Coimbatore to Bangalore also ended up puking in the bus in the middle of the night. )

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