Trip to Ooty

We take a trip in a SX4 Diesel to the less commercially exploited side of Ooty-Kothagiri.

We started our drive from Cochin, early in the morning and headed down the NH47 towards Thirssur. It’s a pretty straightforward route via NH47, passing Angamaly town. Well paved national highway till Thrissur was a delight to drive and the very low early morning traffic ensured that we reached in 50 Mins.From Thrissur we decided to take the Shornur-Palakkad road since the NH was pretty bad in the Thrissur-Palakkad stretch.It was a wise decision as we were able to reach Coimbatore pretty quickly.We took a break for a fantastic Sambar Idli Vada  in Annapoorna. The mettupalayam road was pretty OK and we were able to cross Mettupalayam without much hassles.We took the diversion to Kothagiri and headed towards our destination.We had booked a mid range resort for our stay and reached the place around 11 am.After refreshing we headed out immediately to the View point for some nice snaps and we were not disappointed.We roamed around relaxing in every possible location and capturing some good views on the way.Evening we headed back and had a good dinner prepared by our hosts.The next day we headed out to Ooty and had a good drive in the Kothagiri-Ooty road through some breathtaking views.But we were disappointed when we reached Ooty because of the huge crowd.We quickly changed our plan and drove down to Conoor.We had Lunch In Conoor and headed back to Cochin,The return drive also was smooth except a huge traffic jam near Vallayar check post which consumed one hour of our time.We reached Cochin in the night and retired after a relaxing holiday.

(P.Shanmugaraj works as Cluster Head with a leading pvt bank)