The first hillstation we visited, Ooty or Udhagamandalam, wasn't an immediate success... While Europe was baking in the sun, we were freezing in our 2 sweaters and sleeping bag - although this might be a little exaggerated, due to the lack of sleep.
The nightbusdrive from Mysore to Ooty was horrible - bad seats, no place to put our backpacks nor our feet, this typical hobbly road of India but then 10 times worse and a motor that produced at least 120dB. But we drove through the wildlife sanctuary and saw 2 elephants and a gaur, so that compensated more or less. We arrived fed up in Ooty at 6 in the morning and had to look for a place to stay. The first one we visited was more expensive than our guide book told us, so we looked for another place to stay.
Until then, it had been rather easy to find cheap but at least a little bit decent hotels or guest houses, but here in Ooty it seemed that we had to choose between cheap or decent. We chose for the first one and ended up in the youth hostel, with hot water, but without shower... But we were so tired we didn't care and just went to sleep. Unfortunately that didn't last for too long since they were demolishing part of our building, with lots of noise as a consequence. So we got up and ended up in the rose garden, from where we had a nice view over the town. But Ooty is situated at a height of 2250m and together with the clouds, it gets chilly very early. We didn't have a lot of energy, so just hang around and ate something.
Ooty is really a different atmosphere than the rest of India we already visited. Since it is much cooler all year round, you see people wearing sweaters and gloves and all kinds of things to cover their heads. Lots of clothes look really like our clothes, and you can buy these anywhere in town. Also the athmosphere is different, it seems the people are more distant. We were remarkably few stared at, and also the usual beggars were missing.
After an equally chilly night, we had to get up early. The youth hostel had a 24hour check out (check-out time = check-in time), which is nice when you're arriving late, but when you arrive at 7 in the morning like us, it's not very comfortable. But we managed. We hang around some more (Indians seem to be rather late-in-the-evening-people than early-in-the-morning-people, since the town was empty and all the shops were still closed) and left for the Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary later. Our guide book mentioned that the 'short cut route' to Masinagudi "involves taking one of the small government buses that make the trip down the tortuous Sighur Ghat road. The bends are so tight and the gradient so steep that large buses simply can't use it." Well, they were right about these tight bends (involving 36 hairpinbends) and steep gradient, but we DID go by quite a big bus. Moreover, this bus was packed with like a 100 people and you had to stand squeezed to each other, which lessened the risk of falling in one of these tight bends, but increased the not-feeling-very-well-feeling because of all this turning and breaking. And since the bus had to break on the motor, a 120dB was also part of the drive.
But then again, the views were wonderful and you get to see a whole different part of India (there were some tribal people living there, and we saw some people with really different facial characteristics, but we're not sure whether they belonged to a tribe). We booked a night in a four-bed-dormitory in the park, because that seemed cool. Moreover, it cost next to nothing: 35Rs per person per night. For this price, we were prepared for anything, but it was ok: no shower or sink, but there was a tap and the room was more or less clean.
It turned out to be different: we did a safari (just driving around on the main road in a jeep) - we saw quite a lot of animals, but the nicest was the elephant herd (6 or 7 elephants) with two very young and small elephants, so cute! The boys form the safari invited us for a camp fire at night, so we went with them, and we even slept there: in a tree house, about 6m high! That was really great, except for the rain that started to fall around 2am and caused our sleeping bags to be wet... But well, we're going to Thanjavur now, so probably it will be warm there and everything can dry!
That's it for now, more news later!
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