Ooty : Of Gardens and Factories!

Day 3:

We started our day early, waking up to the huge French windows overlooking the private balcony. The windows were completely filled with the condensed water on the outside and I had to wipe the windows a little to see if the Sun had risen! (Cold climates can do that to your windows)

Ooty, the beauty

A perfect holiday for me always includes a good murder mystery, so there I was wide awake early in the morning, on the sunny balcony reading an e-book, which was perfect for the occasion, called The Murder at the Mayfair Hotel, by C.J.Archer. (Will review it down the line.)

Once GBee woke up at 7 a.m., he and I wore our sweaters and caps, ran towards the playground on the bottom level of the hotel. We played together on the adjacent swings like best friends do! He also played on the slide for his hearts content. That’s when KBee and Mr.Bee came down and all the four of us played on the see-saws.

Slides, see-saw and swings – Zoom in for the playground at the bottom level!

By the time we had our baths, we were late for our breakfast. Everyone had theirs before 8:30 a.m. We went by 9, had our breakfast, played for a little while in the kids playroom which had carrom board, Ludo, chess board and Table Tennis. We spent 5 minutes at each table and returned to our room, to plan our day.

We reached the famous Botanical Garden of Ooty, the heavy rush at the entrance reminded us of Kumbh Melas, of which we only heard through News channels! (We didn’t buy the entrance ticket, but returned to the parking area, to visit some other place.) I bought a beautiful grey,black and red poncho at the Tibetan market, bought seeds of beautiful flowering plants suitable for Hyderabad and got into the car.

We had our lunch at the Angara. Their Cream of Mushroom soup was the best (though, I am not a fan of mushroom). Since the weather in Ooty is low, at 14 C, even the water served for drinking is lukewarm. There is also a ban on plastic in Ooty which is a welcome move by the Tamil Nadu Government. (Even in Tirumala, near Tirupathi, plastic is banned. These environment friendly gestures are highly appreciated.)

It started drizzling by the time we came out of the restaurant.  We decided to go to the Rose Garden. We had already bought rain proof jackets for both the kiddos at the Tibetan market earlier, so rain was not an issue for us.

The Government Rose Garden too looked like a sea of humans was going about in it! The garden itself had less number of roses in bloom! We spent most of the time in the garden running, me behind GBee and Mr.Bee behind KBee! I found myself wondering, why won’t they stop running and let my eyes enjoy the scenery? But then, they hardly sit quietly at home, expecting them to sit in a huge multi-level park with greenery seemed preposterous.

Me running after GBee, KBee following me and Mr.Bee capturing the moment, forever!

We took a couple of photos with the in-house photographer and exited the rose garden, before taking the photo of the below butterfly. (4 of us were tired from running around!)

The Butterfly in the Rose Garden!

After a brief snack break, we decided to test our luck at the Tea and Chocolate Factory! Wherever we went, there was a heavy rush of people, mostly from Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, who came to enjoy the weekend at Ooty. (I am telling this by the license plates I saw everywhere!)

Anyway, we reached the Chocolate Factory and GBee was so excited to see so many chocolates, he kept ‘wow’ing. (I hope that’s a word!) KBee is too small to know what a chocolate really is, but he was excited too, to run away!

We breezed through the Tea making and Chocolate making, rushed towards the shops. We bought Masala Tea, Ginger Tea and Green Tea, some chocolates like dark almond, dark rice crackle, dark hazelnut etc. I also bought some Eucalyptus Oil and pain oil too. We also bought Kashmiri woven shawl for gifting. With this we returned to the car.

Tea & Chocolate Factory – Pic courtesy Search Engine

We reached La Montana, had our evening cuppa Tea in the room, read some 50 pages of my e-book, waiting for time to pass!

At 7 p.m., the campfire was lit. GBee wanted to play on the swing, so Mr.Bee was on his toes. I and KBee enjoyed the campfire. We met fellow tourists, a huge family of Gujaratis, a newly married couple and an extremely silent family of 4!

I also tried the swing, with KBee on my lap, but both of us ended up falling on the ground! I hurt my hand, when it grazed the metal chain, thankfully KBee was unhurt. He found it funny that both of us fell forward, me landing on my knees, holding KBee in both my arms. He laughed for a while! I too laughed it off, (in embarrassment, actually!)

At 8 p.m., we returned to the room, since the Gujarati family had started dancing and we were famished. We had a simple dinner of veg fried rice and curd rice and called it a day. As usual, we slept like logs.

P.S:

1. It is advisable to buy your jackets, sweaters and shawls in Ooty. They have some very good pieces on display too and none are made locally, but imported from other states.
2. The curd rice in Ooty was awesome. I had it every night of our stay there. Yummy! Never knew a simple curd rice can fill both your heart and stomach!
3. Traffic and parking are the main issues one would face in Ooty. If you are travelling in your own vehicle, God save you!
4. Chocolate Tea is famous in Ooty, but I didn’t know what the fuss was about! Sorry! I loved the masala chai that was given for sampling at the Tea factory.
5. Every night, the kids entertained themselves in the room with the stickers I packed for them. They would stick, the variety of stickers, on the walls, suitcases, bed and on each other!
6. If you are travelling with picky eaters like my boys, I advise you pack some homemade eatables for them, to fill them up. I made them a powder, which they add to their rice, idlis, dosa or eat directly without any accompaniment.

Till the next post, bubye!

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