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Extremely relaxing road trip to beautiful Coonoor in our Hyundai i20

17th March 2025, 15:41 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

We booked a homestay whose location was insanely pretty and scenic, especially for us city people. It's located in the middle of acres tea plantations.

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Intro

The point of this trip was to say goodbye to my sister, who will be going abroad for higher studies. A sort of a last dance before she leaves. We live in Bangalore and our criteria for the destination were as follows:

Drive should be less than 8 hours.
Off-beat/Not a crowded tourist spot.

We were looking at:

Kodai
Wayanad(Canned for obvious reasons)
Coonoor
Ooty
Gokarna
Varkala
Vagamon

Finally decided that Coonoor/Kotagiri fit our criteria and started looking at home stay options. Found a place in Coonoor-Ghar homestay Coonoor that was away from the main town. More on that later.

Day 1

The plan was to start from home at 4:30 a.m. on the 15th August. Surprisingly, we were only 20 minutes behind schedule, and ended up leaving at 4:50. Crazy traffic at 5:10 near Hudson circle/KR Market.

Cleared the traffic and finally hit the Mysore expressway at 6.

Stopped at one Hari Govindas for Coffee, after the expressway. Nice spot and very good filter coffee.

Some photos from Bandipur/Mudumallai:

On exiting Mudumallai, we were asked to stop and register for a Nilgiris E-Pass. We didn't have to pay anything, but no idea what the point was, since we were never asked to show the pass at any point during the trip.

After Mudumallai, we started the 36 hairpin bends to Ooty within an hour or so.

These mist-covered mountains

We stopped for lunch at one Thalssery restaurant in Ooty, which was on the way to our homestay. I doubt if this restaurant is actually a part of the Thalssery chain. Food was okay. Deserted restaurant. 5/10.

We finally reached the homestay around 3 p.m. The location is insanely beautiful and scenic, especially for us city people. It's located in the middle of acres upon acres of tea plantations.

Sharing some pics from the numerous walks we took around the place.

Day 2

Today, we were supposed to take the toy train that goes from Coonoor to Ketti. However, IRCTC randomly cancelled the train at the last minute so we made alternate plans. First on the agenda was to visit an RC church, say our prayers, and then carry on. After some searching in the Coonoor town, we came to St. Anthony's church, a beautiful and cosy church on a hill top.

From the church, we set out in search of Filter Coffee, a rare commodity in Coonoor (Only instant coffee). In search of our coffee, we had the opportunity to walk through Coonoor's "shortcuts" - flights of stairs that run literally through the city.

The stairs:

Some sights of Coonoor:

After Sim's park, we had lunch at a dosa joint (It had strawberry and dry fruit dosa, and gave us a kallu dosa for Uthappam). This restaurant was on Bedford Road... and as it turned out, Bedford Road had quiet a few interesting places to explore. We checked out one 'Gaia pottery store', a handicraft store which occupied a beautiful house.