The Colder Side of India

Note: I haven't had internet for the past 2 weeks so I have a lot of backlogged half written posts that will be going up in the next few days.


Thursday was a day off for me as I woke up around 6am with a mild case of gastritis. Getting sick was almost inevitable and I’m just glad I didn’t feel awful and got over it quickly.

Friday: We left at about 9:30am for Ooty, a town in the mountains north of Namakkal, where they have a sheep breeding facility and spectacular views. It was going to be an almost all day drive and we were crammed tight into the van. I am still amazed that all our luggage fit in the back (there is just a tiny trunk area to the van, but with some tetris skills the driver got it all in). It was also a tighter squeeze because we had to fit the driver’s attendant on the van as well. I was rather indignant about the need for an attendant, but more on how wrong I was later. After several hours of driving, ipod listening, and being jealous of Erin’s ability to read in a car, we stopped for lunch at Saravanaa Bhavan. It is the same restaurant that the three Indian students took us to for lunch in Chennai where we had the best Indian food we have had on the trip. (They also have a few branches in the USA; I’m going to try to visit the one in Manhattan.) Unfortunately they were closed…so we went to the restaurant next door. This decision would spark the phrase repeated many times (and now ongoing joke) of “we should have gone to a different restaurant”. All our meals were brought out at different times, they forgot a few of our orders, the drinks didn’t come out until the end of the meal (after asking 5 times), the food was too spicy even for the Subbiahs, etc. My lips were tingling/burning for about an hour after the meal.

After a few more hours on the van we stopped again for tea and cake (it was just like an American road trip!). We got to try some Indian fruitcake, which is Dr. Subbiah’s favorite dessert. It is not like American Christmas fruitcake, but more like a light pound cake with a few pieces of raisins, cherries, and other candied fruits inside. The fruitcake came from right out of the oven and it was still steaming as it was handed to us on small pieces of newspaper at the roadside shop. By this point our van had travelled far up into the mountains and the cool air made us glad for hot tea and warm, fresh cake. The weather in Ooty is entirely different from Chennai and Namakkal. Chennai especially is an extremely hot and humid climate, while Ooty is cold and damp. The high during the day is about 60-65 degrees right now. During our van ride up the mountain to Ooty I had to pull my sweatshirt out to wear. The drive up the mountain is rather treacherous with lots of hairpin bends, blind curves, and crazy Indian drivers. This is where the attendant comes in, as he is an extra pair of eyes on the road. He also functions as a rear view mirror and a left turn blinker. I have come 180 on my opinion of driving with an attendant.

The place we are staying in Ooty is absolutely amazing. It is a large house that almost looks like a castle (it has a turret) atop a hill surrounded by fields with sheep and looking down on a small village. The scenery looks very much like images I have seen of the moors in Scotland (disclaimer: I have never actually been to Scotland). Even though the house is cold and clammy since there is no heat, I absolutely love it here. We are the only people staying in the house so it has a kind of homey feel. I am staying in a bedroom upstairs with Carrie and Ana. The Subbiahs have the other bedroom upstairs and the others are sharing the three bedrooms downstairs. Downstairs there is also a dining room attached to a kitchen where our meals are prepared by two workers who upkeep the house. I know I am going to miss this place when we leave.

We spent the late afternoon exploring the fields and nearby village, walking along the muddy road with the eyes of the locals (especially the children) following us. The sky was overcast and misty, which should make the town appear drab, but the rows of stone houses with grassy gardens out front look cheerful to me. We meandered back to the house just before it got completely pitch black and had a delicious warm dinner. In the evening I taught most of our group how to play Backalley (a family card game) since Spades had become a favorite nighttime activity, but only allows four players (while Backalley is similar, but can have any number of players). I have surprised myself and have not missed television at all.

Saturday: I woke up at 8am to take a cold bucket shower and get dressed in a 40 degree room (since there is not heat and the window in the bathroom can’t close all the way the inside is the same temperature as the outside). We asked at breakfast for the correct knobs to be turned to get hot water in the bathrooms. Our plan in Ooty is mostly one of tourist activities rather than vet related activities, so our first stop of the day was at a lookout point on the highest peak in southern India (8,460 feet above sea level). Normally from this lookout you can see all of Ooty and some towns beyond, but sadly it was a very foggy day and you couldn’t see more than 20 feet in front of you on top of the mountain. It was rather cold and windy up there so I was amused to see multiple ice cream vendors on the peak. They also had a vendor selling bags of carrots, which I have since seen multiple times in and around Ooty (this would do well to catch on in the US).

From the peak we drove down the mountain a few minutes to the Tea Museum and Shop where we had a brief presentation on how tea is made and then got to see the machinery they use here to go from fresh tea leaves to ready to brew loose tea. Ooty is in the Nilgiris region, which is very famous for its tea. I bought several types of tea and am most excited to try my cardamom tea when I get home as I have become addicted to the “tea” (what we would call chai) here – a tea spiced with cardamom and cinnamon and made with milk. After buying tons of tea and spices we packed our boxes in the van and went to a swank restaurant for lunch. I was so happy to see “boiled vegetables” on the menu as I’ve really missed just plain veggies. I also got some garlic naan that had big chunks of garlic all throughout it and was incredibly tasty (several of us got the garlic naan and we joked that our breath combined was going to stink up the van).

The restaurant where we had lunch was in the main part of town so we just walked down the street and stopped at shops along the way. I bought and ate some date and nut chocolate (homemade chocolate is a specialty here) while watching Jennifer and Erin buy bulk spices at a small tea and spice shop. Many spices are grown in this area and so are very cheap here; I’ve bought a ton of cinnamon bark at ridiculously low prices. After about an hour of shopping we piled back into the van and went to the local botanical gardens. It was a huge garden with multiple terraced levels and a combination of well-manicured topiaries and overgrown areas of wild plants. I wish the weather had been better as it misted to rained the whole time we were there, but there were really interesting plants and beautiful flowers everywhere and I took a ton of pictures (I think I may have to have an entire facebook album just for pictures of plants in India).

Our last stop of the day was at a lake surrounded by an amusement park and shops. After taking a few scenery pictures we wandered around the area and found the Thread Garden, which Valerie had seen in her guidebook. For 15 rupees (about 30 cents) we got to see a garden of fake flowers made by hand spinning thread over flower-shaped cutouts. It is actually quite an impressive feat considering how many “flowers” they had there, but you couldn’t get close enough to the flowers to appreciate how detailed the work was and the room was very dim so the colors appeared muted. We returned back to our house in the hills for a late dinner and some card games before bed.

Your random India fact for the day: They don’t have magnets in India. It’s not that they are just uncommon or hard to find, but rather they are not available anywhere. While discussing a case of hardware disease in a cow in Namakkal we asked about using a magnet in the rumen as we do in the USA (hardware disease occurs when a cow eats a piece of wire or something and it pierces the stomach, goes through the diaphragm, and hits the heart – cows will eat anything). The doctor replied that they didn’t have magnets available to them and that some vet students from Michigan were going to mail their hospital some magnets soon so they could start using them. Now you can appreciate the front of your fridge a little bit more.