The Trigger

April 2024. Bengaluru running 35°C. A work trip to the city overlapped with the Lok Sabha election day landing on a Friday — a long weekend on a plate. Spontaneous trips age better because nothing has time to rot. We picked Ooty for the elevation drop. Time was tight; the plan was 48 hours and a bus ride.

Journey Onward

MMK A/C bus via Redbus, 1915 INR per head, departure 17 April (Thursday). Pickup point: Marathahalli Kalamandir, 10pm sharp. Bengaluru traffic delivered us at 10:10pm. The driver had been waiting since 9:45pm and had a few words ready when we boarded. Then we found out the AC was broken.

The bus held at Electronic City for 30 minutes while a mechanic restored cooling. Refreshments came as chips, juice, and biscuits. By dawn the road was Coonoor’s switchbacks; sleep collapsed under the corners. 5:45am stop at Green Hills Family Restaurant for a washroom break.

More uncomfortable driving and a rising vertigo before we got off at 7:40am at Sarkar Palace, the local parking yard.

Hotel was a kilometre uphill. Ooty’s autos are the wide-back kind, four people plus luggage. 120 INR. We were at the door by 8am.

Beverly Villa gave us a mid-sized room to crash in between 8am and the 1pm check-in window. This is non-trivial: most Ooty hotels will not let you in before mid-day.

The Villa

Beverly Villa runs tiered rooms. We negotiated direct, beat the online rates, and got an early check-in folded in:

Booking summary:
Deluxe (26 April, early check-in): 2500 INR
Family suite (26-27 April): 9000 INR
Total tariff: 20,500 INR
Official check-in: 1pm
Check-out: 11am

The lobby has table football, chess, and carrom scattered around. Our family suite came open at 11am — two interconnected rooms with separate bathrooms and a shared kitchen.

Botanical, Boutique, Brunch

Between rooms, we walked downhill to the botanical garden, 400m away. Maps held up on the switchbacks. Past the Sacred Heart Cathedral on the way.

10:15am, 50 INR per head. We covered maybe a sixth of the garden in the hour we had. Maintained, popular, and worth more time than we gave it.

The Italian Garden section uphill has shrubs and hedges trimmed into animal shapes. The sun there is unfiltered. Worth seeing, less worth lingering in.

The villa was already calling about our family room being ready. We took photos and left.

Back via auto (same 120 INR rate) to a restaurant near the hotel.

Le Cafe runs a heavy breakfast in a Spanish-siesta setup: outdoor seating, rustic, slow.

Adjacent: Little Earth, a supermarket-cum-larder with farm-fresh produce, handcrafts, and the usual essentials.

Service at Le Cafe was uneven. Some plates earned the bill, others did not. Wait times were long, presentation carried part of the price tag.

Mid-day. Family room ready, breakfast (dim sums, burgers, garlic bread, ramen, mocktails) sitting heavier than planned. Back to the suite for a nap.

Dinosaurs and Desserts

2pm: rickshaw to Angara for a North Indian lunch in a South Indian setting.

The waiter at Angara was fluent in Bengali, which was the surprise of the meal. We ordered biryani, rumali roti, ghee rice, keema, and mocktails — fuel for what was coming.

Thunder World is a small amusement park aimed at children, walking distance from Angara. We picked the second tier, which gets you the central plaza and access to the themed gates branching off it. We started in the vintage camera museum section.

The dinosaur park is where it stops being for children. A mechanical T. rex head at the gate, then a tunnel of skeletal reconstructions, opening into a clearing of model theropods. Several are animated. The animation triggers without warning.

After we let the inner child finish being terrified, we moved to the haunted house / rainforest section. Genuine startles. A figure that springs out of a coffin with steam and audio cues. The grown-ups in the group were not unaffected.

Then to the toy train station for the 4:30pm window. Four (sometimes five) diesel toy trains run daily between Udagamandalam (Ooty) and Coonoor. They sell out fast. We had booked a week ahead and could only get the 4:45pm departure, arriving 5:55pm. First class, 525 INR plus GST per ticket.

The station feeds out into the Coonoor town square, where a fleet of autos waits for tourists. We negotiated 150 INR to Cherry Berry, a supermarket-restaurant-farm in the highlands known for its desserts.

Savaari from Cherry Berry back to the hotel: 2000 INR for the one-way drop. We took a minimum dinner via online delivery and called it a night.

It’s Teatime

Day 2 we negotiated a full-day cab through the hotel for the standard sightseeing loop. We started at 11am at the tea and chocolate factory uphill. Parking was at queue-on-queue. The factory entry: 20 INR, payable on the spot in cash or UPI.

Inside, panels run through tea history and methodology. The chocolate-making side opens up next, with workers visibly producing the popular SKUs. The tour ends with a free tea-tasting and a shop selling locally-produced everything.

Then the Wax Museum, a short drive away. We stopped at the government-sanctioned textile shop first for some shopping. Wax Museum entry: 50 INR per head. The figures are surprisingly lifelike, several with a real you-look-twice quality. Two from Kolkata stood out.

Our driver had a planned lunch spot calibrated for the post-lunch waterfall stop. We pivoted to Earl’s Secret instead. He warned us about the distance and the queue. We took the warning and skipped the waterfall. The road climbed in serpentines into a small English-cottage setup. We miscalculated the wait time and ended up spending the better part of an hour shooting selfies on the lawns.

We were eventually seated. Beverages and desserts landed. Mains underdelivered against the reputation.

End of the Road

Almost everyone we spoke to recommended Moddy’s chocolates. We were too full to consider eating any of them on the spot. Plan: rest at the hotel until 4pm, leave at 7pm, board the return bus at 8pm. The Moddy’s run fit between.

Moddy’s was packed. We picked baked items for dinner and chocolates for after. Pricing was steep — that is what the brand asks for. They run online delivery too. The Streamline return bus was a big upgrade on the inbound: better condition, less crowded, marginally cheaper at 1575 INR per head.

I was asleep within minutes of boarding. By report there was a midnight stop at Saravana Bhavan for a restroom break, with some passenger argument that the staff cut short. We were back in Bengaluru by 4:30am.

Field Notes

• Coonoor switchbacks. A 30-minute stretch of sharp edge-of-the-road turns. Bring motion-sickness pills if you are prone.
• Bargain hotels and cabs. Phone-direct beats the online rate often. Autos seem to run on standard rates; do not bother haggling those.
• Hindi works. Locals are surprisingly fluent. Useful if you are coming from the north.
• Ooty is touristy and the sun is harsh. Elevation amplifies it in summer. Most spots shut by 7pm; food delivery stops by 9:30pm.
• Toy train: book a week+ ahead. They sell out. The 4:45pm slot is the most often-available.
• Calibrate food expectations. Most meals are average for the price. Lean on beverages, desserts, and ambiance.

One Recommendation

The toy train between Ooty and Coonoor. The same line where the Dil Se song with A.R. Rahman, Shah Rukh Khan, and Malaika Arora was filmed. Here is a glimpse of the ride via Instagram @dot.pixelaha:

Breaking out,
Sayantan