the light baggage

Overview: Tucked in the eastern end of the Nilgiris is the taluk of Kotagiri. The more popular ones among the tourists are Ooty and Coonoor. We started early morning from Bengaluru, and headed towards Mysore road. Avoiding all the traffic, we reached the TN border at Mudumalai forests at around 8am. We stopped at Pykara lake for a break and for some boating experience at the placid lake. The view was spectacular with the forests surrounding the lake from all sides. The boat ride took around 1 hour and we were back on the road. Crossing the crowded town of Ooty, we reached Vanamala farms at Kotagiri. The farmstay is around 1o kms away from the Kotagiri town, and is completely isolated. One can hear just chirping of birds and feel lost in the midst of nature. The hospitality was not too great, and there was some confusion of our arrival time, but the staff managed to arrange dinner on time for us. Bonfire was also arranged post dinner. Next to the homestay is a small abandoned house ...

Overview: My wife recently got a travel voucher for completing 5 years with her company, so we were pondering over which place to visit to utilize this bounty. We finalized on Red Hills near Ooty. I had read about it a lot and wanted to do this once, but due to budget constraints had to put brakes on this. So thought this as a perfect time to visit Red Hills. We booked the Red Hills Nature resort for 1 day and the transportation from Ooty bus stand as well. We started from Bangalore at 10:30pm on a Friday. We reached Ooty at around 9am on Saturday morning and found the cab waiting for us at the bus stand. The Red hills nature resort is around 35kms from Ooty and the route leading to the resort is breathtaking with lush green countryside. On the way we come across names like Emerald and Avalanche which reflects the impressions left by the British. The roads till Emerald village are in a good condition but after that it takes a beating and our idea of not driving down from Bangalore to...