Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Ooty-oot!

After saying farewell to my parents in Wayanad, we said hello to independence, and our first stop was to be Udhagamandalam a.k.a. Ooty. Ooty is a hill station in the Nilgiri Mountains of Tamil Nadu, at an elevation of  2240m. It has a unique mountain ecosystem, with many different species of birds, flowers and trees (including eucalyptus and pine).
                                    

On our first day we visited the Botanical Gardens, which had many native and exotic species...




















The next day we took a day trip on the 'Miniature Train' that was made into a UNESCO World Heritage site. 









Coonoor

...after an hour of beautiful mountain views we arrived in Coonoor, a neighbouring hill station. 
Here we saw many beautiful tea plantations...

...and got to sample many kinds of tea.

There was what the Indians call a Bison chilling in this tea field, eating weeds I think.





Some buddies we made along the way...


This is a view point called Lamb's Rock, there were no lambs in sight, but apparently this was a favourite picnic spot of a British General, named Lamb.




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