Coonoor and Ooty 9/15-21/08 (hill stations in the Nilgiri Hills)

Taj Garden Hotel in Coonoor
Savoy Hotel in Ooty
Garden at Savoy

Ooty Lake

Horses in the Ooty streets

Tribal Museum near Ooty

Erulappan and Gopal

Tribal Museum

Erulappan, Gopal, and Umesh

Since we're leaving south India at the end of this month and are particularly fond of Tamil Nadu, we decided to check out the Tamil Nadu hill stations. The heat is too difficult for me, and the hill stations are cooler. That's why they were colonial hangouts. Gopal and I caught a 7:30pm bus from Puducherry to Coimbatore on Monday, 9/15, where we caught another bus up into the hills to Coonoor. We arrived in Coonoor around 9:30am the following day. The view from the bus en route to Coonoor was gorgeous, mountains and forest for over an hour with hardly a building to be seen. Unfortunately, our new camera somehow misplaced our pictures of our ride up, as well as most of our pictures of Coonoor. The irony of this is that we fell in love with Coonoor, and unless we find another place more wonderful, we would love to live there. We looked at a couple rentals available in January. We'll see. We need to look at a couple other areas of India before we commit. We spent three nights in Coonoor, one night in Ooty, then took a bus back to Pondicherry. We weren't very crazy about Ooty but found a great Tribal Museum outside Ooty, thanks to an autorickshaw driver, Umesh. The museum was closed, but the security guy, Erulappan, opened it and gave us a personal tour. It was very special in many ways. If we settle in Coonoor, we are going to get involved in NGOs in Ooty assisting the Nilgiri tribal people and helping at the museum. Another interesting aspect of Ooty is that there are more horses wandering the streets than cows! Apparently, people have a hard time affording the upkeep of the horses so let them wander loose to feed themselves.

Note: It would be fun to get a comment here and there. You can click on "Comments" at the end of the post and leave an opinion or note if you feel like it.