Ooty

Ooty — Udhagamandalam officially, the Nilgiri hills' once-official hill station — sits at 2,240 metres above the plains of Tamil Nadu, reached by the Nilgiri Mountain Railway that has been climbing the world's steepest rack-and-pinion gradient since 1899.

The British came to Ooty in 1819 seeking a climate cool enough to grow the produce their officers missed from home: strawberries, potatoes, eucalyptus, cabbages. The vegetables took hold, and by the mid-19th century Ooty was the summer capital of the Madras Presidency, populated with Raj-era bungalows, a racecourse, a botanical garden, and the boarding schools that provided the secondary education of the Anglo-Indian elite.

The Nilgiri Mountain Railway, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, climbs from Mettupalayam to Ooty through 208 curves, 208 bridges, and 16 tunnels on a track of 46 kilometres that takes four hours at an average speed of 12 kilometres per hour. The rack-and-pinion section between Mettupalayam and Coonoor, where the gradient reaches one-in-12.28, is the steepest in Asia and requires the steam engine to push rather than pull the carriages on the ascent — for the same mechanical reasons that this grade has defeated every other form of railway traction.

Places to Visit in Ooty

• Ooty Lake
• Botanical Gardens
• Nilgiri Mountain Railway
• Doddabetta Peak

Things to Do in Ooty

• Toy train ride on the Nilgiri railway
• Tea estate visits
• Boating on Ooty Lake