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We caught the bus to Coimbatore as we had to overnight there before catching train up to Ooty. The bus journey was not too interesting - over the plains. Coimbatore was also forgettable - another dirty city even though we had a really good South Indian meal (vegetarian) there.
We were up at 4:30 to get the train up the mountain. The train is narrow gauge and pushed by a steam train using a rack & pinion system because it climbs very steep gradients. The train goes very slowly but the view s were amazing. It stopped to take on water regularly - at some stops we seemed to be inundated with monkeys.
Ooty used to be a nice hill station surrounded by tea plantations but has been overdeveloped and the town is not that great. We were staying outside in another heritage property - very pleasant. We met an American couple in their 80s who were on a birding trip. Both were retired professors and were fascinating to talk to. I hope we are still travelling at their age.
There is not much to do on Ooty - the girls decided to go round the botanical gardens whilst we boys went to the gymkhana club for a game of golf. The club insisted we had a caddy each and a 3rd caddy to ball spot. The course is quite tough - lots of hills and blind spots with thick undergrowth. The ball spotter was good because whenever you were off line the spotter found it - amazingly, always in a very good lie. The other hazard was the cow and elephant droppings on the course. Ken managed to land in one and claimed relief from it - I thought it very dubious as he was off the fairway. It would have been interesting to see him play the ball as it lay!
- comments
Simon F rule 27 subsection c states the ball has relief off fairway...you must play out elephant dung, change of shirt afterwards not permitted