The Road To Ooty

(Morning gang. Sorry for the delay in posting)

Well that was fun. 8.5 hours to cover the 175 miles from Kochi to Ooty. As Marvin said, the first twenty were the worst.... And the second twenty - they were the worst too. The third twenty, I didn't enjoy at all! 

In fairness, once I was clear of Kochi, it did quieten down a little with the actual toughest part being the last 40 miles of mountain roads up to Ooty. In many respects, it was a laugh because of the twisty bits and I did have little fantasies about going round Douglas hairpin on an Enfield (Douglas Hairpin - the inventor of the hairpin, stupid!) However, I was shaken from these daydreams by the charming tendency of the lorries and coaches to use these blind corners for their boldest overtaking manoeuvres. At least twice I had the whole, life flashing before my eyes, bit (and worryingly, I didn't feature in much of it - I was probably off drinking somewhere. Good work!) Still, a combination of dumb luck and some fine Anglo Saxon swearing saw me safely(!) through. It's just possible that the swearing didn't help that much but it made me feel better and I'm sure I read somewhere that swearing lowers your cholesterol 

(fack shut wink)

Ooty

Well, I don't like to be a contrary puss (in truth there's nothing I like more) but Ooty isn't all that - It thinks it's all that but it ain't. Very crowded and fairly scabby, despite the beautiful scenery, it manages not to impress. I can't say my mood was improved by the hard slog up there or the fact that my luxury suite was something of a rat hole with no hot water (nor the promised Wi-Fi but the hot water was the greater hardship). Plus I hadn't heard from Carruthers, (the chap I was meant to meet up there) for two days and had to assume that he'd been bummed to death by a tiger

With full acknowledgment to VIZ magazine. (I've been a subscriber for twenty years so I hope they'll forgive my using a single image - Buy VIZ)

So apart from the hotel, what was Ooty like? Well the railway is fun but against that, there were putrid piles of rubbish dotted around the place. One pile was on fire, whilst a cow was despondently munching it's way through another. Later I saw a stray dog, happily running home with a dead rat in its mouth. Charming vignettes from life in the Nigril mountains!

Oh and worst of all, I couldn't find anywhere serving beer. The Backpacker Pub just served coffee. Well, everyone has their limits so after a cold shower, I got the duck out Dodge

P.S. One positive thing, channel 94 on the telly was showing Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. Ace!