So in planning our trip, Poorna suggested that we visit Ooty… A city also in Tamil Nadu…

It,s nicknamed The Queen of Hill Stations. 9(hill station just means in the mountains)..

Poorna,s uncle Ravi graciously agreed to accompany Yukiko and me on our trip… Awesome… Even more awesome because he pretty much planned entire trip for us…

So Monday night, we left to catch our night train… We took a rickshaw or tuk-tum to the train because its easier to weave through traffic that way. Soooooo bumpy. There’s an Indian joke that says that if a lady is about to go into labor, she should just go for a ride… No need to pay for delivery help… The roads will do the job. Ha. Needless to say, we made it there in record time.

The train station was CRAZY. You know those pictures you see of Indian trains or buses with people practically falling out the windows and doors? Completely true. Not a hard picture to take. Apparently if you don’t have a reservation, its first come first serve and you havens wait in a ridiculous long line that police havr to manage so it doesn’t get out of hand.

On ya, also, train 3tations… Did I mention it smelled like poop there? Ya, really bad. So we boarded our 2nd class no Ac overnight sleeper train. Cool! I’ve never slept on a train beforee… Well ok I did in Germany from Berlin… Or was it Hamburg? To frankurt.. But that was different. We didn’t have beds… Other than the train bathroom being the single most disgusting smelling bathroom I’ve ever used, it was a pleasant experience.

After arriving at our station in the morning, we boarded the famous Toy Train to take us ul the mountain. We actually got oucky because until 2 weeks ago it had been closed for some time. They werent making any money off of it and it was also deemed partially unsafe due to the high potential for landslides during the monsoon season. But the people petitioned that it was such an item that as long as the govt wasn’t losing money, they should keep it open.

And I am sure glad they did. Beautiful! Absolutely gorgeous.

By the time we got to the top of the mountains near ooty, the temperature had dropped to around 55 degrees! Ya, apparently there are places in India that get cold… Didn’t know that. Wish I would have known that.

So anyway, I’ll get bwck to the cold later… Once in ooty,  we took a ride to Muduhmulai. Muduh means elephant and Malak means mountain. The area is famous for its wildlife — elephants tigers monkeys and many more… The area just3 became a national tiger reserve eithin the last year.

So ya… I got to stay a night at a tiger reserve. Sweet. Btw, I forgot to mention earlier, but starting sbout halfway up thr mountain, there are all of a sudden monkeys EVERYWHERE So cool! In the past 3 days, i have seen at least 200 monkeys! Not exaggerating on the numbrf… I counted and it was at lest that many before I gavr up counting.

We were supposed to take an elephant ride deeper into the reserve, but it was raining so much they had to cancel it. We took a jeep instead…

We saw, tons o monkeys, tons of deer, 3 wild elephants, 3 sambar, 2 giant wild boars, and several peacocks. Cool! Also, in the morning, a monkey came up to our doorstep and we fed him some leftovers! He tried to come inside but thankfully he decided he was more interestd in the rice we had poured outside for him. So fun!

The next day, we headed back to Ooty and did some stuff around there that we could… It was cold and rainy so it wasn’t ideal, but still fun. We went to a tea factory, botanical garden, rose garden — they apparently have a world famous exhibition of thousdans of varities of roses when it’s the right season – it’s not the right season right now …

We also went to the highest spot in South India. We couldn’t see anything because of the mist, but that was cool. We took a boat ride in the rain and a few other random things before heading back on another night train to Chennai.

I would love to visit Ooty again when it’s good weather. Beautiful.

More pics on facebook… Trying to put them on google+ also but having a hard time uploading them… takes a lot longer. So mostly you can see them on facebook for now.

I’m currently in Singapore… headed to the outback this evening!!!

Will try to blog about the wedding when I have a chance. 🙂

Peace out.