Any place situated at 7440 feet above mean sea level ought to be cold and Ooty didn’t disappoint me either. See, I am a Himalayan lover, so the colder a place is, the better I feel there! While we didn’t have any concrete plans for today, I had already decided to go exploring places around Ooty, specially Red Hills and the lakes enroute while Sunny, Sunil and Ashish planned to visit Ashish’s ex-school. I was really looking forward to the solo ride on the Kinetic Blaze as I had read a lot about such places, their isolation from the world and also the fantastic tea gardens enroute.
Our place of stay, Reflection Guest House on Boat House Road, is a nice little place with a comfortable environment. Most of the people here are foreigners and you have to come down to the main house (where the owner stays, along with couple of helping maids) for taking meals. It really does feel cozy in there, with a good family type of atmosphere. Sit in the main hall and order food to the maids and once its cooked, they call you to the dining table. And the food does taste home cooked too! Back in the room, we guys had an argument over the route for the next few days with me wanting to cover up on lost time while Sunny wanted to spend quite a few days in Kerala. Anyways that sorted out, the three headed to the school while I blogged for a while and then took the Blaze, the camera, a bottle of water and the jacket and set out to explore the surroundings. As I wrote above, I am a big Himalayan fan but these Nilgiri hills casted their own spell on me as soon as I left the commercialization of Ooty. Yes, it was cold but then I wasn’t going too fast and was constantly stopping to take the pics. Around 20km from our hotel the real magic started. Cell phones signals ceased to exit, traffic became rare and all I could see were tea gardens around and foggy hills in the background! Around a bend, I suddenly came up to a fantastic view of the hills where I probably was heading too plus the lake! I don’t know the name of the lake but this was the first of the many that I would be seeing today. The camera had some problem in the settings but I still carried on clicking pics and was so much into it and soaking myself into the surroundings that I had to literally push my heart to carry on for the destination ahead. There were no location boards with English signs and so I had to ask quite a few times from the locals, who didn’t seem to understand a word of what I said, and neither did I get what they were making me explain! So I just carried on choosing roads by luck and finally arrived at Emerland, a small town, about which I had read on the route to Red Hills. The roads were quite bad and I wondered where this road finally led to. The lake was now my constant companion and as I passed yet another small town, I saw a dam in the background and decided to go there but as luck would have it, the gate to the dam was closed, so instead I took a small road leading to a village, which finally ended into a hill. I took the Blaze up and the scenery from there was spectacular to say the least!
After spending some time I came down back to the main road and carried on. The road started becoming bad but the scenery kept drawing me and I didn’t stop at all. The road then started next to the lake and a small bridge got me to the other side which then passed thru a small tea factory and then through a small apartment complex which seemed as if there had been a nuclear leakage and everyone had fled. I wondered why these were made and why no one stayed here but within a few kilometers I realized why. The road ended into a small electicity generation complex, which again was deserted but the main gate was open. It was built on a lake and the desertion of the place seemed very creepy to me. The only way was back and back I headed and stopped at the place where I could take the Blaze to the shore of the lake. Spent quite a lot of time there taking lot of pictures and trying to get the camera settings right. I was lying on the grass, next to the Blaze and nearly fell asleep when I woken up by the laughter of children! A school had just got over and the children were headed back to their homes when they saw me sleeping!
After some pictures with them, I left back for Ooty. The sun had started to set and it started becoming very cold and with no helmet and gloves, the ride became quite chilly! It is raining now and even with the windows and door closed, I can feel the chill inside! Today was the best day for me in the Leg 2 (has surpassed all what I have seen till date on the leg 2) – from tea gardens to lakes to foggy hills, plus the cold factor! Yes, I did look around for snow (again being a Himalayan lover…) I did go for a small ride around the city, taking smaller and steeper roads around when I was looking around for snacks and somehow like Ooty far better than other hill-stations I have been to. Ooty seems to have retained its charm but something should be done about the roads definitely. Signing off, its only 10pm, but I am very tired and sleepy. Tomorrow we head to Munnar….
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