Coonoor

Coonoor is a hill country resort at 1800m elevation in the Nilgiris (Blue Hills). The first thing you notice is the temperature. Where it was near 40 degrees down on the flat, in Coonoor, the daytime temperature is a pleasant 22-25 degrees, and during the night it drops into the teens.

The place we stayed was lovely and peaceful and quiet:

And had a gorgeous view from the room across some tea field and out to the hills:

It wasn’t actually until the next day as we drove back to town for some food that I realised how big and busy the town actually was. This is only a tiny fraction of it. I loved the bright colours used for the houses:

We also stopped to try some of the many different kinds of bananas you can get here. I always thought there was just one kind of banana cultivated in the world nowadays, but I was wrong:

We spent a few very peaceful days here, enjoying the coolness and quiet. As we left, we actually climbed a bit higher in the mountains, up to about 2200m. Some of the views were spectacular:

The valley through which we descended was also gorgeous, although filled with terrifying hairpin bends all the way down. This was taken from much lower down in the valley where we stopped for tea, looking back up the road we’d come down:

And in the hills past Ooty I got this, one of my favourite pictures of India. Random cow, temple, power lines and gorgeous scenery. The only thing missing is a motorbike (or a hundred).