Travelog: Bangalore -> Kodaikanal -> Munnar -> Thekkady -> Ooty -> Bangalore, Part 4

29^th December 2012
We started early morning for our journey to Ooty. Since we were staying in Lake Palace, we had to ask them about the earliest boat that we could get. We were in our car around 7AM onwards to Ooty.


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We took some time in Ghat section from Thekkady towards Dindigul on NH45.We turn on Dindigul-Palani Road (NH209) towards Coimbatore road. We took around 2:30 hours to reach this junction. The road from where become almost single lane. On this day there was significant pedestrian traffic (probably towards Sabarimala) which made driving very difficult. Very small portion of the road and the speeds plummeted.

Finally we reach SH83 around 11:30AM. The road become significantly better from here onwards.

We reached Dharmapuram at 12:15PM, continued driving on the same road. Palladam at 12:55. Sulur at 1:55PM. There was a small diversion at Sulur and we had to go around some road, finally with the help of Google Navigation, we are back on Salem-Ernakulam Highway at 2:10PM. The road here was fantastic.
We got on to NH165 at 2:25PM. At 2:40PM we go on to NH209 towards Mettupalyam.

Just after Mettupalyam, the climb start towards Ooty. The roads are very narrow with very heavy traffic. At times there is only place to go in one direction and one has to wait for oncoming traffic to pass before one can continue. Unlike hills in North, I found very little driving etiquette here. Many times, one has to stop, reverse the car because the oncoming traffic would just refuse to budge.

We crossed Coonoor at 4:30PM and reached Ooty town at 5:00PM. Of course since we were going to Destiny, The farmstay, our journey had not finished. We continued towards our destination and reached around 6PM.

It was a mix of great and decent roads. None of the roads were undrivable except the small distance near Destiny which was really bad. But that should not bother anybody who is not going to Destiny.