Today I'm leaving Ooty. I've got a couple of hours before I have to catch the train so I'm sitting here at Digitek/Net World computer and internet store, blogging.

Ooty has been fantastic. Definitely the best place I've stayed so far. My hotel was comfortable, the weather was perfect for me, and the area around the town lends itself to peaceful walks through beautiful scenery.

The temperature has been up and down a little, but basically it's like our autumn weather back home. During the day, the sun is bright and the temperature gets into the mid seventies, or around 23 degrees celsius, maybe. It feels warmer in the sun sometimes. At night it goes down to around 40, or 5 celsius. Lucky I have so many blankets! Also this weather gave me an excuse to pull out my jacket, which I haven't been wearing because it turns out there's no rain at all in India except for the monsoon. That's right, I haven't seen a drop of rain yet the entire time I've been here.

Anyway. On my second day here, I went on a "trek". I think I blogged about it already. The day after, I met an Australian guy named Peter at breakfast and we hung out for the day. We also did some hiking, taking the bus halfway up to Dodabetta Peak and hiking the rest of the way, and then back down to the town. That evening I met a third guy, Roger, and the three of us went out to drink "strong" beer and play snooker.

Snooker was invented in Ooty. I never knew much about it but as soon as I learned the rules I realized how incredibly Indian it is. Instead of the normal fifteen numbered pool balls, you get fifteen red balls and six colored balls: green, yellow, brown, blue, pink and black (in order of increasing point value from 2 to 7). You have to alternate between sinking red balls and colored balls. When you sink a red ball you get a point, and when you sink a colored ball you get as many points as it's worth, and then it comes back out onto the table to be sunk again. When you've gotten rid of all the red balls you sink the colored balls in order. It's way more complicated than pool needs to be, but India is all about making things way more complicated than they need to be. It's also a great game.

On the 31st, I took a hike up Elk Hill. My hotel's at the foot of it and Roger had said the trip to the top was pleasant. So I headed up there. The views from the top, or near the top anyway, were spectacular. I took a bunch of pictures which I'm sure you will all see within a couple of months at the most. Anyway, I continued on over to the back side of the hill and was shocked to find a pastoral countryside there. This is about one kilometer from the diesel-exhaust-filled bus stand I've been walking by every day. The scenery there was really beautiful. Mountain villages, tea plantations, the whole works.

When I got back Peter and I went out to celebrate New Year's Eve but couldn't find any people doing that except at expensive hotel parties, so we played snooker some more and drank more "strong" beer. How ghetto of us. I think it's not as big a holiday here as it is in the US.

Yesterday I took another walk. It's just great that you can just walk out of Ooty and almost instantly be in beautiful, natural and quiet(!) surroundings. I guess that's what these hill stations are all about. Today I'm headed for Coimbatore, where I'll spend the night and then make for Munnar tomorrow morning. I think Peter's coming with me to Munnar. It should be more of the same except more hills and less town than Ooty.

The trip is starting to wind down. I've only got two weeks before I fly out of Bangalore, and that doesn't seem like much time any more. Suddenly it seems like I have a lot of things to do. But maybe I won't be so wistful once I get back down out of the hills into some real Indian towns. It sure is nice up here.

- posted by Joachim @ 2:13 AM

 
Today I'm in Ooty (real name: Udhagamandalam, but who wants to bother with all that? Apparently not the Indians, for once). It's a mountain town in the Western Ghats, not too far from Madikeri where I was a few days ago, but more mountainous. I'll keep this blog posting short because I only have a few minutes, but basically it's great here.

First of all it's cold. Not during the day or anything - then it's sunny and warm - but at night it chills right down into the forties. There's no heat so it's a good thing my wonderful hotel (the YWCA) has provided me with two blankets. That means I'm perfectly toasty warm until I have to get out of bed in the morning. But they have also provided me with hot water, so I dash out from under the covers, turn on the heater, jump back in bed and wait half an hour and then take a shower. By the time I'm finished with breakfast it's already in the fifties outside.

Yesterday, my first full day here, I took a hike. Our guide took us through a tea plantation (really, really beautiful), over a bunch of hills, through some local villages and up to a lookout point from which we could see all the surrounding hills. The valleys here are really pretty: steep and terraced with green crops growing and little houses perched on the hillsides and roads zippering up the steep slopes. And all the time the sun and clean mountain air. It's not like any place I've been in India so far. Wonderful!

Today I hiked up another local hill and came back through the town. Turns out Ooty itself is beautiful. The steep hills and valleys wind around each other, the terraces and crops continue right up to the main street, and the little houses, neater and cleaner than any I've seen in India, perch in the sunlight and disgorge laughing children. It's really great.

I'll stay here through the new year and then head south to Munnar, another mountain town. After a couple of days there, it's goodbye to the hills and hello to the backwater marshes of Kerala.

- posted by Joachim @ 7:20 AM