Tour de Ooty | My Ooty Travel Expiriences.

I searched about Ooty in Google. Wrote down important places to visit (as South Indian names are hard to remember)

I took my college bag as usual. Took a night bus from Bangalore to Mettupalayam. 

I reached Mettupalayam in morning 5:30. It’s a small City. 50km away from Ooty.

Why I went there? Because there is one wonderful train which takes us to Ooty. 5o km in 5 hours. It runs inside the great landscapes, hills, and tunnels. What a joy of a journey.

It’s called Nilgiri Express, as Ooty is located in Nilgiri hills. The train is a gift of Britishers.

The engine of Nilgiri express. It gives a feeling of Harry potter world!

The train starts the journey at 7:00 AM. It only takes 80 people no matter how long you wait in line. luckily I was 80th guy! There was one foreigner tourist girl who did not get the chance as she was after me. I felt sorry for her.

I sat near Window. This was the view.

This is the click from Train only. The train passed through many small valleys. 

A Beautiful thing is it also stops at 4-5 intervals just to have a view of nature. Fortunately, in my compartment, I got wonderful youngsters from Kerala. We shared a lot of things. They liked that I was traveling alone. 

From train window

There are houses inside this dense woods! I always dreamed of living in such nature.

And there are wonderful people in small villages who spend their day making people of the train happy. Yes…This guy was selling peanuts in the most beautiful way of selling.  He would give it free if you don’t like it.

When the train reached near Coonoor station, these beautiful Tea farms started stealing the show!

Coonoor is a smaller town than Ooty. some 20 km away from Ooty. It has more beauty than Ooty, and the best part is very few know the right places to visit.

This Guy!! His posters ruled every small railway station walls in the route. What a face!

By the time we reached Ooty, I made friends with those 5-6 Kerala guys. They were singing Malayali songs on the train. I told them the story of my Novel – North pole. They liked it. So there was a memory to make.

Okay. This got blurred.

This seems Okay. We loved the journey. I won’t forget these faces. Ever. They were people full of Sparks. Like a sky full of stars 🙂

And then…as usual when I do not take proper sleep, I spoil my stomach. I needed the toilet. 😉 I had booked one hotel from OYO rooms App. Directly went there. Had some Dhosa from on the way to Hotel. At hotel after 1 hour of sleep, I started my journey inside the Ooty town. Google is great!

This lake was the first choice. Not that Good choice, though. I imagined it to be something spiritual, but we Indians spoil every single natural place.

But there I met that foreign girl! The one who was not allowed on Nilgiri express in morning. She was alone. Standing near the lake. In the first moment, I thought not to spoil her privacy as many people were going to her and were asking for Selfie! She was little disturbed by Indian behavior I think. She obviously was not a fan of a selfie.

I went to her, though.

“Hi…I am Jitesh. I just wanted to ask you that which book you are referring for world travel? I want to go on a whole world tour, but I don’t know guide book”. I asked her.

She was happy! She replied: “I do not use Lonely Planet” (For readers: Loney plant is most common book world travelers use. I have done research as I want to travel the whole world in 2019)

We started talking. A lot. She said, “You are different.” I knew it 😉 Her name is Katharina. They call her Kate. She belonged from the small village ‘Biedesheim’ in Germany.

We decided to do rest of our journey together. We talked about our lives. We talked about Indian culture, my writing, her travel plans, and our Ooty plans.

We took a ‘tuk-tuk’ and went to Botanical Garden in Ooty. (She calls auto-rikshaw a ‘Tuk-Tuk’. I don’t know why!

The shape of this tree is giving a lot of ideas. Not mentionable.

We sat here. Kate shared her life story. I shared Mine.

We did not know the name of single plant/tree here. But as there is a sentence in North pole: “It’s okay if you don’t know what the bird name is. But you must understand this bird is equally important in this world as you are. “

The evening started crawling in the city. I and Kate went to One Church as we both loved Churches.

Here…

This one is  Portuguese style church. Church in Germany (Middle Europe) are different – Kate

There was an evening outside.

We planned to go for dinner. we had rice and Veg butter masala. I tried eating this combination first time! Being Gujarati I need Roti!

City night! As Kate went back to her Hotel, I wandered the city alone. It was beautiful.

It is good to take some good decision of life in front of full moon night. I did.

I went back to hotel at 11:00 PM. Next day I and Kate had a plan of Randon trip of Doddabetta. It was 20 km away.

From Doddabetta Top hill

From the downhill

In return, we got one local tourist bus. They were people from Coimbatore. We danced inside the bus. We also visited one Tea factory on way back.

The factory was serving fresh free tea. I drank 3 cups! 

At 12:00 PM we were back in Ooty city. I and Kate decided to visit Coonoor. It was the breathtaking experience!

This will stay in memory for a lifetime. It is the highest point of Nilgiri hills @Coonoor. No tourist came here. 

Sorry. There was one tourist who took our Photo. 🙂 

There was small Waterfall which was miles away, but we were listening to its music.

…and there stopped our journey.

But I forgot to tell you a story from Kate’s side.  Kate is just 25-year old Germen girl who always dreamed of traveling the whole world. She says:

“I am traveling alone. I earned money for last 10 years of my life, and now I am on my way. It is my 44th day in the world traveling. I have completed 15 countries. I came to India after completing Shree Lanka. I will stay 3 weeks here.”

But there are a lot of things which my friend did not say, but I observed. She was one hell of a daring woman who was dealing with hotel guys, auto-wallas, random people on Indian streets. Alone! It takes strong willpower to leave your comfort zone and to dive into an unknown world.

“You will be a totally different person when you will go back to home after one year Kate,” I told her. She was laughing. We promised each other to meet in Bangalore again as she was coming to Bangalore for visiting the city.

That evening, we made some more memories.

We laughed on our culture. She called Auto – Tuktuk, and Chocolate- Bonbon

After dinner in the same hotel, I took the bus back to Bangalore.

And yes…I made one wonderful friend who would give me some work and place to stay in Germany when I would go on world tour. I have promised I would visit ‘Biedesheim’ village there.

Thanks.