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!

This second part of this trip started off with the visit to the botanical gardens 🌳🌲🌴 in Ooty. After our quick “Jungle Safari“, we went to our hotel 🏩 to freshen up, change into new clothes 👕👖, and have some food 🍕. After spending good 30-40 minutes, we embarked upon our itinerary for the day.

This included – visit to the botanical gardens, followed by a quick lunch at some local Idli-Dosa place; Then, visit to the local festivities, and finally heading back to the hotel before the dark 🌚 (because, some of us – me 🤣, are afraid to roam around in the dark).

It was a packed itinerary keeping the tourist places and food scenes in mind.
Shall we?

Botanical Gardens – I had been to botanical gardens before, especially the one in Nagpur ❣️, near my hometown 🏠. The botanical garden in Nagpur is notoriously 👩‍❤️‍👨 famous as the hookup spot for the young and new couples 🤓. If you visit this place, you will find young couples in weird and embarrassing places 💋.

I liked this botanical garden as it was well maintained 👍🏽 and came across as a family 👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 hangout place. I saw many kids in the line for the park and roaming around inside. Plus, how can you forget my love for greenery as reflected here too. The one spot which stood out for me was that they carved the Indian 🇮🇳 map out of some bushes 🥬, flowers 🌼, and soil 🧱. Interesting thing about it was that they used the different colored 🎨 soil to represent the soil from each individual state, which I thought, was quite clever. I still remember that spot, which you can see below 💝. I am not sure if it is still there 🤷🏽‍♂️.

Lunch – Though I do not have any pictures from the lunch 🍽 that we had, but, I distinctly remember we had some south Indian delicacy – “Idli & Dosa” from the nearby restaurant. The reason I remember this is because it was scorching heat 🔥🥵 and we had to look for some place to eat. People, it was 2014 and we had no access to the Google Maps 👴🏽.

Local festivities – I don’t remember whether the locals were celebrating some festival, but, there was a tremendous crowd 🤨 to check out all the cool things and displays that people put out.
It was a crowded place and we ended up spending good 10 minutes for the parking, before requesting our driver to find the parking spot and join us later.

There were countless things to do. We had a couple magic shows 🎩. I saw a giant wheel 𐃏 too. I panned across the scenery, and saw a long line of people waiting for their turn to hop in to one of the boat tours. We were not sure about the attraction.

Here’s the line for the boat tour that I was talking about. (Don’t ignore the scorching sunlight! 🥵)

I remember looking at the crowd and thinking of buying the tickets. But, as soon as we realized the wait was going to be more than an hour 😲, we dropped and “settled” for other fun activities. 😏

I saw a couple guys blowing out giant bubbles 🧼 to attract the kids and hopefully get some tips from their parents. Having looked around all shops and activities, we decided to purchase a package deal, which gave access to 2-3 attractions. It was economical 💸 and sounded fun.

We started off with a haunted 🎃👻 house. For people in the US, it is quite common to experience the Haunted Houses during the Halloween season, so in comparison, this haunted house was “cute” 😝. But, hey, this was in India and in March of 2014. So, nothing to complain over there. 🕶

After the haunted house, I remember going through the Mirror Tunnel 👓. I thought that was really cool as it made fools of us every single time. I still remember I was trying to be a smarty 🤓 pants before my friends and failed miserably when I knocked myself on one of the glass walls – my friends made fun of me 😂🤭 then and I did not hear the end of it for quite some time.
It was fun to watch other people struggle too through that Mirror Tunnel.
You check it out for yourself. 👇🏽

I think this was the last spot that we checked out before calling our driver 🚙 to get the car. At the end of that day, everybody was tired 🥱. Even though, it does sound like we did not do many things, trust me, the five of us know how much energy and time we spent at each spot; Making fun of each other and having the time of our lives.

On our way back to the hotel, every one of us fell asleep 😴 and woke up only after reaching our hotel. Our driver told us that he would pick us up at 8 AM the next day for Coonoor 🙌🏽, which was the last destination in our itinerary before heading home.

Time to conclude the part 2 of this trip. 🧘🏼‍♂️

Part 3, here I come!

See you soon!

Where do I start with this?

Ok! Let me introduce the group first. Back in my Cognizant days, we had a group called M.A.H.A.N. It doesn’t take a genius 🧠 to figure out those were the initials of our names. We were a fun bunch of people 👨👩👨👩👩. Making fun of each other, laugh at each other’s stupid jokes, and what not. Basically, having a good time as all of us just started with our first job straight outta college. 💻

If I remember correctly, we started planning this trip, because, one of the members of the M.A.H.A.N. group relocated to Hyderabad 😥 and this was a good getaway to spend some quality time together. 🧡

We started planning and as none of us could drive and were going to Tamil Nadu 🇮🇳 for the first time, decided it was a good idea to book a driver 👨‍✈️ with a vehicle 🏎️. At the end, it turned out to be a good decision. I think and wonder about the luxurious things you could afford in India as compared to the states! 😌

We started our journey after leaving work on a Friday at around 11 PM 🌃. It was a bad timing, as we fought a heavy traffic ⛔ getting out of Bangalore. If you have ever lived in Bangalore or even visited it once, you will realize what I am talking about. I has only worsened over the years and I am not sure if the government has done anything about it! 🤷‍♂️

The first moment of relief came when we left the city and finally hit the highway. We started talking about all the random things that we did not get chance to talk about in the last month and a half.

The funny thing about catching up with friends is that it is never enough! The human being craves for more. 🙂

We were so engrossed in talking to each other, we did not even realize that it has been a couple of hours for us. People, it was 2014, so not everyone of us had smartphone; This helped us to have a face-to-face conversation instead of gluing to our phone, which I think, is rude and unnecessary. 🤗😇

As soon as we realized it was 3 in the morning, everyone agreed that it was “Chai Time” 🍵. I was a big chai person back then; And, there is nothing better than having a late night chai with your loved ones. 💖
Here’s me enjoying my chai. I don’t look too tired, do I? Oh, the good old days!! I can’t imagine staying up late till 3 AM and not yawn! 😫

After having this Chai Time, we headed straight to a jungle safari 🚌. The speciality of this “Jungle Safari” was that we got to see a couple of lions 🦁. I still remember the scenery from the “kind-of-open” bus that we sat in. It had big windows and roughed up seats (it was common scene in Indian public buses back in 2014; I am not sure if this changed over the last half decade).
Here’s my picture from that very bus.

I remember having a great time looking at all the wild animals and being humbled at the way these “animals” stay together in herds. It made me wonder and compare them with humans, who are self-centered and at times selfish. #thinkingtank
It was this day when I was reintroduced with the nature and realized one more time how much I love nature and will trade anything to be there, as witnessed the first time when I trekked at the Kudremukha. #naturalbeauty

I think this is a good point to end the part 1 of this trip.
We will pick up from here to the second part and continue with the trip.

Till then, take care everyone!