The Backpacker

Mules and hilly blues

Why do mules walk on roads? This is a question every tourist to Ooty asks one another. But as a traveler, I seek the answers. Mules walk on roads because there is nowhere else to walk.

It is no laughing matter. Ooty (Udagamandalam), a beautiful hill station perched around a plateau high in the Nilgiri Mountains of Southern India, is run with horses and donkeys (and hence the mules). But that is nothing __wait till you meet with monkeys, cows, geese, ducks and dogs. It is them that made my journey to this marvelous hill station unforgettable. (Every time I see my picture album, a mule’s smiling face or a geese pecking at my ankles appears. Don’t ask me how it got there).

But that is Ooty. From Mysore, sturdy, ancient buses drag you up the hills via Masinagudi (replica of a Texan countryside minus the cowboys) through a nine hour journey. You can get off anywhere you like and lose yourself in the forest, but that option is not popular. So people hold on to the seats and stare at the scenery which consists of thick forests, hills, elephants, deer and other wild animals, glad to be safe inside.

It is a different story once you reach Kalahatti after 32 tightly wound hairpin bends. Here begins a different kind of visual treat. Borders of three Indian states meet near here and agree to live peacefully content to watch the rolling landscape of hills, forests, tea gardens and grasslands all enveloped in a warm, tangy aroma of eucalyptus. At Kalahatti I alighted for tea. The weather was crisp and crackling and the Kalhatti falls were cascading down a height of 122 m. Of course you cannot get down to the water unless you have the knack of melting into the forests and negotiating your way through the dense vegetation to the falls.

So to Ooty I went.

The first thing I met outside the hotel (Blue Hills) was a brown mule nodding his head appreciatively. Shiva, the bell-boy told me later that “the ass had an eye for the ‘extraordinary.’ His giggles clearly gave away what he could not say. He had, I supposed been around a mule for long. Luckily for him I was tired. I slept while Ooty turned chilly and cold.

Day Two: There is no greater comfort than a cup of tea in the morning. Shiva burst in with a steaming cup at 6 am and would have landed with his face in the tea cup had I not grabbed it urgently. (Maybe I should not have been so courteous. I remembered his giggles). I was out in the cold at 6.15 am.

Ooty is best discovered on foot or horse. Even an auto-rickshaw is a cheap way except that it makes rude sounds. The silent, empty town whispered to me as I wandered about in search of tea which I eventually found in a miniscule tea shop with partially open tin door. The owner, a very old man with a woolen scarf tightly wound over his head was a good tea maker.

Rajan, the sleepy jeep driver and I were the first visitors to Dodabetta Peak that morning. Looking around the valley below I understood why Ooty was called the ‘blue mountain.’ Lavender-blue flowers of Strobilanthes covered the hills in floral profusion. I guess it was these funnel-shaped blossoms that give Ooty its pet name.

Rajan suggested a train ride to Conoor. The Blue Mountain Express is the slowest train I have traveled on. This Pull-Push train is so slow that you can hop off at the numerous stations (Love Dale being the best of all), have a leisurely cup of tea and yet clamber back on without hurry. But what was the hurry anyway? Women plucked tea leaves in miles of tea-gardens and stopped to wave at the train as it crawled by.

Conoor was just as beautiful as Ooty and well-known for it’s ‘old schools’ and churches. The hills are another matter altogether. Conoor also has a ‘Hotel Blue Hills’ where I spent the night hoping my meager luggage in its namesake hotel 17 km uphill at Ooty was safe.

Day three: (Back to Ooty): Shiva was surprisingly happy to see me. I spent the day at the Botanical Garden studying various species of trees and plants, before paying a brief visit to the lake and the Sims Park. Three days had gone before I realized I had not trekked. To my delight I discovered the Nilgiris are a trekker's paradise. There are treks and treks in whichever direction you turn and from whichever point you start, varying only in distance and altitudes. That is how I discovered Snowdon and Ketty Valley. What more could I ask for? The names were romantic too!!

Oh, but for a cup of tea!!