Mar 29-30, 2014 – Ooty & Coonoor, Tamil Nadu, India 🚌🧳🌳 (Part 3)

I promise 🤞🏽, this is the last post from this trip!!
If you have not read the first and second part, please give it a read for the “whole” storyline! 👂🏽

So, the third day started off with the most awaited place we wanted to visit in this trip. We knew we had to visit Coonoor because of its tea ☕️ gardens 🍃 and the breathtaking view of the Doddabetta peak 🏔. The word Dobbabetta is of Badugu origin and it literally means Big Mountain! I have seen the lush green tea gardens in “those” Bollywood flicks since I was a small kid in India.

People who have visited both Ooty & Coonoor might be aware about the train 🚃 that runs to and fro between Ooty and Coonoor. Turns out, every person who visits these places also know about it. Duh! 𒂃 So, when we showed up to get the tickets for this train, the crowd and the line was unthinkable. I had never seen so many people at the ticket counter except for a cricket 🏏 game. It was unreal. 😰

We stood in line for about 5-10 minutes before calling it quits, because, people were getting out of control and cutting 😡 in line from every possible directions. Gosh, I was not ready for this, that early in the morning. 😖

So, (treating ourselves as royals) we decided to take another road trip 🚙 to Coonoor. I am sure the train journey had been breathtaking, but, the comfort 🛀🏼 mattered more; As long as we were spending time with each other. We were glad we got to do both of these! 🥰

Surprisingly, it was just an hour journey for us. It was not too short and not too long, just perfect morning drive! We enjoyed talking to each other and looking outside at all the lush greenery. 🌳

By the time we reached Coonoor, we were obviously hungry 🍕. We had a few bites of the local delicacies, before starting off with our day.

The first place we visited was the famous tea gardens in Coonoor. I think this is the numero uno attraction for people visiting Coonoor. I mean, how can you not fall in love with this beautiful view? 😍🧡

I clicked this when we were on our way to the tea gardens. I remember this was taken from the terrace of one of the coffee/tea shops on our way. A funny thing about this stop is we tried some samples from that store and liked the taste of the chocolate tea, so we ended up buying a few packets of the chocolate tea. Over the time, we did give most of it away to friends and family. 🙅🏽‍♂️😂

The tea garden was a kind of mixed experience. Though I enjoyed the lavish foliage, the place did not come across as something a guy would enjoy. 👎🏽 I do not mean to downplay anyone, but, on a personal note, the place did not excite me, so I did not click many pictures at this place. You can see my not-so-enthusiastic face below. 👇🏽

As you can see, I felt like I was trapped in tea leaves. The gals had a lot of fun here, so I ended up clicking their pictures most times. 🌆

After this, it was time to visit one more park. This time, it was Sim’s Park 🎟 in Coonoor. By now, you might have a better idea that I am a sucker for parks, forests, trees, etc. If you have to use one word to describe my liking for nature, I would say I am a Naturalist 🌍. So, coming back to the location. I loved this park. It had everything that I liked about parks. It had clean and lovely pavements, many trees and abundant places where you could hang out with your friends and family. I was happy to be around my friends while enjoying this beautiful place. See for yourself, how happy I am! 😋

After having a lot of fun at the Sim’s Park, we headed off to our last spot which was some hilly area with many stairs. We were so tired 🥱 roaming around the whole day, so some of us decided to skip the stairs and hang out at the bottom of the hill. 😴

The adventurer in me was not done for the day, so the along with a friend, I decided to take the stairs and climb that hill to treat ourselves with this beautiful view. ☀️👍🏽

I did not regret a single bit about this small hike. The sense of happiness at the end surmounted the arduous hike and made it totally worth it. 🙌🏽🎧

I remember just pausing for a moment at the top to take it all in. The mountains, the Sun, the fresh air, the silence, and my thoughts.

One thing that I realized that day is that I need at least one moment with myself and my thoughts to soak it all in, which is what all my travels are about. I yearn for those moments, and fortunately, I got that during this trip. 👍🏽
In that one moment, I realized how important and fruitful this trip was! 💝

This was the last spot and thus our trip was concluded, or was it?

A few interesting incidents happened on our way back to Bangalore, but, I will keep those for some other time. 🤣
I hope this travel story was worth a read! 😌

See you soon!