South India Exploration ride of 2010: Day 7:
Everybody got up lazily the next day, the agenda for the day was just some sight seeing and a short ride to Doddabetta hill top. Since we still had our room for another night, this was also the only day in our ride when we will be riding without Saddle bags all day, everyone was looking forward to today’s ride. So, first of all, we started at 10.30, and our first stop for the day was for Brunch.
After hogging on kebabs and biryani at *Some restaurant* in the Ooty market, we headed towards Doddabetta. Since it was raining on and off, so we kept our raincoats on. Ankit had to buy a new one from Ooty market since his raincoat tore off when he was putting it on in the morning. Anyways, after a picturesque ride through the hills, we finally made it to Doddabetta by 1.30 PM.
After spending some time pixellating the entire premises, we left the place at around 3PM.
All of us in a single frame. Rare photo :).
It was very foggy on that day so we could hardly see any views from Doddabetta.
But when the clouds did clear up slightly for a few minutes, we could see Coonoor in the distance in the above pic.
And headed straight to Ooty lake. On the downhill journey, I realised that I was having issues with the rear bake and so continued towards Ooty mrket in search of a Bajaj service centre alongwith Ashutosh. The effort in the end was futile as the SS people could do nothing as it was not a Probiking. In the meantime, the rest of the pack was enjoying themselves at the lake pixellating everything in sight.. The beauty of the place only reminded me of this song from the film ‘Maine Pyar Kiya’.
But instead of pixellating the beauty of the place, all the guys did when I was gone to BAL SVC was to click poser shots :p
But finally, good sense prevailed and we got this masterpiece…
We spent lots of time around the lake, mostly reflecting over what we had experienced over the last week. We were also looking forward to our last dinner together as a group for the ride. We bought souvenirs and some *Famous in Ooty* Chocolates and left Ooty lake at around 7.30PM. As soon as the sun set, the mercury started dropping sharply and soon it got very chilly. We wanted to celebrate the last supper for the ride thus far so after some more shopping in Ooty market, found a decent Lounge bar in Ooty market for a round of drinks 🙂 . Soon after, we left the place and went next door for some nice and warm Chinese food. The food, though only decent, tasted expecially good since it was giving us much needed warmth on an unusually chilly evening. We wound up dinner by 10.30 and started heading towards our room, topped up fuel en route and decided on an early morning start. Cleared the dues with the Room owners and slowly one by one everyone dozed off. The highlight of the day was even though we spent an entire day with a civilization, we failed to spot even one instance of child labour wherever we went in Ooty.
Antz Travelz !! 