Day Two

The morning was cold enough to make anyone wanna stay in bed..but as there was no more pressing reason to stay in bed than the warmth of a blanket, I found myself awake by 7 itself. Went over to my friends’ room and knocked. No response. I knocked again. No response still. I looked up at the room number. It was the wrong room.

Not a very good start to the day you’d say. You would have said rightly too. But that one inconspicuous event apart, the rest of the day went quite well. Helga an I wanted to go for a walk. Maria was slightly reluctant..she has quite an affinity towards stayin in bed on a cold winter morning..but we dragged her out all the same. Plans were on for Coonoor and the Ooty lake. We decided to go to Coonoor in the morning and be back in time for going to the lake in the evening..

Now I’d gone to Coonoor once before with Musafir and I knew the place a little. So we landed up at the very same place where I’d gone before..Smart of me, wasn’t it? Hehehe..But it wasn’t all that bad..Had a long, but pleasant walk to Highfield Tea Estate..nothing much had changed in the last few months since I’d been there- they were still cultivating tea. Helga went gaga over the golf course that lay at the foot of the tea plantation. There was a tea factory and we made our way towards it. Right outside the factory there was a sales outlet where they were selling medicinal oils, herbs and tea leaves. There were some very interesting medicines too..ointments, for hair growth, for hair loss, for weight loss, weight gain, for piles, heck there was something for everything!! It was every hypochondriac’s dream…

Had a short educational trip to the tea factory..the education cost us 5 Rs each..but was worth it..cant say I can create tea powder outa tea leaves though…

We then went for a walk through the tea plantation..After 15 mins of walking through a lil bit of slush, a lil bit of potential snake breeding ground..and plenty of tea plants (Helga insists it be called a tree) we finally reached somewhere..

“Where have you brought us?” they asked
“Nowhere in particular..this is just a nice place to sit..”

I almost got kicked..thankfully, after that long walk, neither of them were charged enough to do that.

It was around 4 by the time we returned to Ooty…In between Maria went missing in action – read ‘searching for an ATM’..went in for a very late lunch and by the time we reached the lake, it was already dark.

There were horse rides on offer at the lake and Helga wanted to go horsing around right then, but Maria, sanity and I prevailed on her. It was too dark and it made no sense to go galloping away into the night ..atleast not yet..so we promised the guys that Helga would return the next day.

The rest of the day, or what remained of it, was spent shopping for chocolates and hunting for wine. Dint get the latter and got a lot of the former. Had such a lot of chocolates for samples that my taste buds went rather numb. I spied a pub rather aptly named Bacchus..wanted to go in too..and we did that too..only to come out rather soon…they weren’t serving any Breezers (which Maria and Helgs were rather too insistent upon:-( ) and I wasn’t fancying drinking alone either!

What happened when we reached our rooms would sound rather scandalous to my mom. I was in a room with these two ladies and the lights were off!

We were just talking…

I SWEAR!!!!!

Day 3 would have to wait till Monday..

Shain