Travel Destinations for this August – Ooty, India
Let’s say you’re considering a trip to the mysterious continent of India consider the hill resort of Ootacamund or Ooty for short. This is one of the region’s most sought after tourist destinations and for good reason, it is ideally located in the hollow of four rather large hills situated in the Nilgiris or Blue Mountains.
This 19th century hill resort was founded by the British and it stands at over seven thousand feet above sea level. Due to its location the resort benefits from great weather all year round, the average temperature ranging between fifteen and twenty centigrade with the occasional drop towards freezing during the winter.
The surrounding landscape is marked by rolling hills veiled in layers upon layers of wild flowers and a short distance outside the town you will find that the plantations of cardamom, tea and eucalyptus forests dominate the landscape. This means that the entire place is bathed in a constant smell of tea and spices which only helps to add to the slightly surreal atmosphere of the place.
Since the resort was founded by the British then it should come as no surprise that there are a lot of Colonial era style structures in the town, British-style cottages and bungalows with fireplaces and gardens. They chose this place because due to the altitude the weather was very reminiscent of their homeland so they created this heaven so that they could escape when the heat of India got too much for them.
You will be best suited to visit Ooty on your own, meaning that bundled tours while they’ll take you to see the main attractions those will also be the most crowded ones and as such you won’t get to enjoy the true reason for why Ooty was built. Instead if you choose to go on your own you could stay in the nearby and smaller towns of Coonoor and Kotagiri, which are less noisy, cheaper and less than an hour away from Ooty, and you can then spend your time exploring the surroundings either by hiking or with the help of a motorized vehicle. Make sure to visit a tea plantation and a tea factory if at all possible.
One thing that you will definitely have to visit however are the Ooty Botanical Gardens. This is a massive twenty-two hectare area which is maintained by the government and which was laid out back in 1847. There are over 650 species of trees and plants as well as a fossil of a tree thought to be over twenty million years old.
These are of course only a few of the things that you can see and do in Ooty, these have been just a very short description of what you will actually get once you’re there.
Photo by: juhutours
