Ooty

South India · Tamil Nadu

Ooty, Tamil Nadu

The queen of the Nilgiris, toy train and all · ~88 km from Coimbatore

Plan this trip

Getting there

By road

~88 km from Coimbatore

By rail

Mettupalayam, ~40 km, where the Nilgiri Mountain Railway (UNESCO-listed toy train) begins

By air

Coimbatore International Airport (CJB), ~88 km

Best time to visit

March to June for the season, September-November for quiet

Don't miss

Botanical Gardens

Doddabetta Peak

Ooty Lake

Rose Garden

Things to do

Nilgiri Mountain Railway ride

Boating

Tea factory visits

Where to eat

Earl's Secret

Place To Bee

Moddy's for homemade chocolates

Sources: open-meteo, wikimedia, Photo: Hemant meena · CC BY-SA 3.0

What to pack

Proper warm layers — nights get genuinely cold

A quieter corner

Avalanche Lake's shola forest, permit-limited and pristine

About Ooty

Hills

Where it is

Ooty, officially Udhagamandalam, is the chief town of the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu, at about 2,200 m on the Nilgiri plateau of the Western Ghats, near the borders with Kerala and Karnataka.

History

The Toda, Kota, Badaga and other hill peoples lived on the Nilgiri plateau long before John Sullivan, the British Collector of Coimbatore, reported on it in 1819 and built the first European house at Ooty. The town became the summer capital of the Madras Presidency, and the Nilgiri Mountain Railway reached it in 1908.

People

Tamil is the main language, with Badaga, Malayalam and Kannada also spoken. The Badaga farm tea and vegetables on the surrounding slopes, and the Toda, known for their barrel-roofed huts, buffalo herding and red-and-black embroidery, keep their hamlets, called munds, on the plateau.

Known for

The Nilgiri Mountain Railway toy train
The Government Botanical Garden
Doddabetta, the highest peak in the Nilgiris
Ooty Lake and the Rose Garden
Nilgiri tea and Ooty varkey biscuits

Did you know?

Snooker is said to have been perfected into its modern form on the billiard tables of the Ootacamund Club, where British army officers played in the late 19th century.