UP TO OOTY

Ooty is one of those places in India one keeps hearing about from other tourists (and Indians) as a good spot to visit. Understandable. It is high up in the mountains, has a very nice botanical garden (which is kept clean) and offers some relief from the air pollution and dust so prevalent on the plains below. The town also sports a considerable colonial history and some major tea plantations which are much in evidence in the hills surrounding the town. But, unkind as it may be to say so, I did not find Ooty particularly “memorable”… Perhaps I would have felt differently had we chosen to stay at one of the fancier “western” hotels above the town, gone on an organized tour of the plantations, etc. But, at least in this case, we chose to visit India rather than take part in an East India Trading Company nostalgia tour…

What was memorable was the getting to Ooty ! There is a small gauge steam train (maybe the last working one in India) that runs from the bottom of the mountain up to Ooty. The Indians call it a “toy train”; it runs only once a day, leaving very early in the morning and we decided it would be a great (if slow) way to catch the scenery and enjoy a mode of transport barely seen or used anymore.

The nearest town with a decent hotel from where the train departs is an hour’s drive away (or so we were told…). We booked a taxi for the next morning to pick us up at 5:30 AM in order to make the early departure.

And so the next day arrived but the taxi did not…. It was a half hour late and with 45 minutes to go before the train departed (after having been advised it took at least an hour to get there), I rather heatedly told the driver there was no point taking us there unless we could make the train. Was that a really brilliant thing to say ? Hmmm….. Not that I’ll ever be known for making great (or rational) statements at that time of the morning sans coffee… The driver wasn’t about to lose his fare, so off we went, at great speed, still in the dark, on unlit back country Indian roads to catch a toy train.

For those of you who have not been to India, a few words on its roads and drivers… I have been to Turkey, the Middle East and rural parts of Southern Europe but NOTHING compares to the level of danger and chaos that is standard on the road in India. Even on its newest four lane highways, one can expect at least 5-6 lanes of traffic with one of those lanes used for cars driving up the wrong way. This is normal…. The Indians have also developed a system of using their horns (which works better than you’d expect) to communicate what the driver intends (or doesn’t intend) to accomplish. One sound if the driver is intending to pass, (and on which side), another sound as an answer from the vehicle ahead showing its agreement or disagreement, so forth and so on…. All of the larger vehicles have the phrase “Horn Please” written on the back of them. The noise near any well used road is constant and I suspect quite necessary. I also noticed that many vehicles had removed their side view mirrors. What I couldn’t decide is whether the “horn system “rendered them pointless or if this was a practical move, because with traffic so tight in the cities, they’d likely be snapped off anyway…

Back to our taxi ride. The horn system is good & well if what you’re beeping at can respond. But, at that time of the morning on the smaller roads, other cars and trucks are not your fellow travelers. In the pre-dawn hours, India’s poor use the roads to walk on and manually haul their laden carts to whatever place they’re going to that day. The non-daylight hours are also when the many roaming cows and packs of dogs come out to eat the rubbish that’s been thrown out the night before. For all the driver’s “horning”, the humans couldn’t get out of the way fast enough and the animals didn’t seem to care. So as we beeped and swerved through the darkness, I found it increasing difficult to decide whether our near certain demise would be reported as ironic, tragic or simply stupid…

We did survive though and in best Indian fashion arrived at the station a few minutes before the train was to depart-only to be told that it would be delayed for two hours because it was waiting for another train to arrive first !

Now calling it a toy train has a lot to do with the size of the carriages.

Skinny benches built for toy sized people. It was kind of cute though until our carriage filled up with (what seemed like) 200 students going on class trips…

The engine was anything but small and it appropriately belched steam and coal smoke the entire way, driven by an engineer only too happy to blow the whistle every few minutes.

And off we went (ever so slowly) and in addition to the stops we made to take on more water for the engine, there were also stops for clearing rocks and branches that had fallen on the track and stops at each hill station along the way.

The scenery was indeed beautiful, lush jungle type plants, long views down the mountain, waterfalls, and clouds and mist rising up from the top of the foliage.

But, somewhere along the way (I think it was around the 4^th hour of what ended up being a 7 hour train ride), I kinda lost it…. I can’t be exactly sure but the combination of the cramped space (with the students from different schools now amusing themselves by repeatedly belting out their respective school anthems), the altitude, the inhaling of coal smoke from the engine and the slowness of the journey finally induced me into a near catatonic state… Alison termed this as “scenery hysteria”.

From my increasingly “particular” perspective even the troops of monkeys present at each hill station were getting weirder the higher we climbed. I might have gotten that observation right though. All the tourists were feeding the monkeys their left over snacks and coffee. Monkeys on processed sugar and caffeine aren’t the prettiest sight in the world. A bit like those shots they show you of people at the Republican after hour convention parties…

Downtown Ooty

Indian Tea plantation

Some say that life is all about the journey and not where you depart from or arrive at. I can report that when it came time to leave Ooty, we took a taxi after a nice breakfast…

Brett