Trip to Nilgiris and Mysore

Come any long weekend, people in Bangalore think about where to go. After much deliberations, we planned to go to Ootacamund, Coonoor and Mysore for May 1 long weekend (Yes, finally I sat down to write this travelogue after two months of the trip). We took an additional couple of days off from work and made it a five day trip.

After getting the bookings done and other necessary arrangements being made, we finally hit the road at 6 in the morning on April 29. Since our booked accomodation was in Coonoor, it was a long way to go. We took NH-209 route passing through Kanakapura-Talakadu-T.Narasipura-Chamarajnagar. At Chamarajnagar, we took the NH-212 route towards Gundlupet and joined the NH-67 route through Bandipur and Mudumalai towards Ooty. We took the Gudalur route as it is less steeper than the Kalhatty/Masinagudi route, but the downside is that it is almost 35 Kms longer that translates to an hour and half of additional time taken on ghat roads. The Gudalur route passes through Pykara, Naduvattam and joins the Kalhatty route around 6-8 Kms before Ooty town. I was surprised by the volume of traffic between Ooty to Coonoor and the roads being narrow made the 20 Kms distance between the two an hour longer. NH-209 does not offer eating outlets as compared to the many available on Mysore route option. We took a tea break at Pugmarks restaurant just before the start of  Bandipur forest. Ooty and Coonoor have become very crowded now and it takes a long time to navigate through the city. Finally, we reached our resort at Upper Coonoor at 4:00 PM in the evening (after GPS confusing us with the route to the destination for almost 40 minutes).  After a tiring journey of 330 Kms, we were welcomed by the beauty of Nilgiris surrounding the resort and the gentle fragrance of tea in the air.

 

Having seen all the conventional places in Ooty and Coonoor, we planned to see something new and zeroed in on a place called Avalanchi. The place is around 50 Kms from Coonoor where we were staying. We engaged a driver from the resort to take us to that place in our car and drop us back. After an hour and half long of journey through the winding roads, we reached the place from where we have to take the ticket in government run jeeps/buses to go inside the forest reserve. We did not sight any animals as such, but the view of the lake was very good and was like a scenery we usually see in wallpapers.

The following day was our return from Nilgiris. The sprawling tea estates and the beauty of Nilgiris are the attractions to go for and the crowd and commercialization of the place are something that will leave a bad taste. We hired the same driver on return and alas! On the ghat roads near Pykara, a Tavera came and hit our car from behind for he did not keep a safe distance from us as required on the ghats. The hit left a big dent on my car's rear bumper and as it turned out later, it left a big dent on my pocket too. With a dent in heart on our new car being hit, I released the services of driver at Theppekadu and drove our car from there to Mysore that was around 90 Kms far through NH-67 and NH-212.

We reached Mysore on May 1 evening and the long weekend crowd was seen everywhere from restaurants to all places of interest. The illumination at night of the Amba Vilas Palace was awesome.

The following day was visit to Sri Chamundeshwari temple and Zoo.  Mysore zoo which is officially called as Sri Chamarajendra Zoological Gardens is very well maintained and it takes good 3 hours to see the zoo in its entirety. We visited Sri Ranganathaswamy temple at Srirangapatna in the evening. The visit to Brindavan gardens was something that we wanted to forget as it was heavily crowded and we were finding it very difficult to walk as well admist the crowd and rains. 

Being a long weekend, we started early at 6 AM from Mysore the following day to escape the traffic on Bangalore-Mysore SH-17 road and reached Bangalore at 10 AM. It was a long trip, and it was a good trip to the land of Nilgiris and Kaveri. It is true to say that the beauty of land lies in its rivers and mountains.