A long weekend and the desire to escape the growing heat of the city encouraged me to leave my workplace earlier than usual one Friday evening and travel to the Nilgiris. As my companion and I headed to the bus station, we were aware of the odds of returning home the same night in disappointment due to the unavailability of tickets on account of the long weekend. Hoping to find a direct bus to our destination from another station, we bought tickets to Mysore.

It was 1 a.m. when the bus reached Mysore. The station was quiet, with waiting passengers asleep, some on chairs and some on the platform. After waiting in vain for over 40 minutes, we took a bus to Coimbatore, from where, according to the persuasive driver, there were frequent buses to the Nilgiris.

The journey from Mysore to Coimbatore in the night had my heart in my mouth as I sat down watching the bus traverse 27 sharp hairpin bends. I awakened from my torpor when I saw the bus negotiate the first hairpin bend, from the front seat facing the windscreen; thenceforth I was in a dither. My eyes were wide open with my heart racing a thousand miles every time I saw the driver manoeuvre the bus through the two-way steep turn. I was learning to drive at the time, with a little help from my companion, so I marvelled at the driver’s accuracy in judging the distance required to be maintained from the cordon for the bus to turn safely through the sharpest curves. My companion, though, was fast asleep, curled up awkwardly beside the driver’s seat.

After we passed the board of relief, namely, “1/27 hairpin bend”, I think I saw an animal that resembled an antelope, and later, two deer on the side of thoroughfare. When the sun rose, we were travelling through Kovilpalayam in Coimbatore. Most passengers had long left. At 8 a.m., the benevolent driver dropped us at the New Coimbatore terminus, which was kind of him because the intended last stop was the Old Coimbatore terminus, and the New Coimbatore terminus was where one found frequent buses to the Nilgiris.

Because the Nilgiris was about 80 kilometers away, I had presumed that it would take a very long time to reach the hills. However, the journey, which again spanned hairpin bends—through which I unexpectedly fell asleep this time—took about four hours. Finally at noon, we reached the bustling capital of the Nilgiris district, Ooty.

Irrespective of the distance covered, the minimum fare in the auto-rickshaws in Ooty was 50 rupees, as was also stated on the information boards. As one expected, the drivers demanded more than the stated minimum fare. We checked into Hotel Sweekar, which was five minutes away from the Ooty bus station. The European styled guest house maintained by an Iranian couple was serene, simple, and relatively clean. The rent was 650 rupees per night. Breakfast cost 150 rupees per person. Lunch and dinner were not served. Warm water was available till 1 p.m. There were outdoor clotheslines and the room had a basic TV.

With the itinerary for the day drafted by the host in the pocket, and other essential items including a knife in the backpack, we took a rickshaw to the town hub. I saw people selling carrots, and tourists nibbling on them in several places. After satiating our hunger, we walked to the bus stop and were soon on our way to Doddabetta (Big Hill).

When the local bus to Kotagiri had covered a few kilometres, I saw from the window that it had passed through a few hairpin bends. The street where we were, before we boarded the green local bus, then appeared to be further down. Before long, the conductor and a fellow commuter signalled that our presumed destination had arrived.

No sooner did I get off the bus than a man approached me to caution that to go to Doddabetta without an automobile (his jeep, to be precise) is unviable as wild animals frequent the route and the distance is too long. Instead of offering the costly ride, he and his fellow representatives chose to discourage us from getting there under our own steam.

The time was 3 p.m. One step towards the pathway in the woods and I was beginning to feel the sylvan climate. Imbibing the elusive magnificence of the elevated willowy trees, some blossoming and some withered, within the summer sunbeams of Ooty, I marched uphill towards the highest mountain in the Nilgiri Hills. Once in a while, I could hear a peculiar crying of an animal.

The hike seemed unattainable from time to time. The pathway was to close at 5 p.m. Inert people in moving vehicles looked askance at our requesting gestures. My companion carried my backpack despite my resistance. He also asked me to sing a song in order to distract us from the physical exertion. The climb was challenging and invigorating. When I finally reached the summit, I was dissatisfied with the ambiances. Several people present at the highpoint wanted a magnified glimpse of the scenic surroundings through the telescope. The queue at the observatory was only growing in number. I was having the uplifting Nilgiris tea, while the lively people were heading to the Telescope House and the Suicide Point. I began to wonder if I would be content in a beautiful place—without a camera.

We requested the driver of an open jeep that was parked outside the highpoint to let us board from the open back for a paid ride downhill. He agreed but refused to be paid as he already had a customer. Standing alongside was a boy named Armstrong, the driver’s apprentice, who was pursuing a diploma in Civil engineering. I wished it had taken longer for the jeep to reach the access way, because the downhill ride was akin to an amusement ride, which I enjoyed.

The Tea Factory was next on the itinerary. Fortuitously, a minibus stopped when we waved our arms this time. The courteous passengers, some of whom offered us their seats, were policemen from Hyderabad who were in the district for election duty, and that Saturday was their day-off for visiting the attractions. They dropped us outside the entrance of the highest elevated tea factory in South India.

When I was at the Tea Factory, I made sure I captured every machine used to manufacture tea powder and every board that described the process. The audio recording played at the factory describing the processes involved could not be followed. I still do not know how the leaves are transformed into powder through those machines. I hope to find out by magnifying all the pictures taken at the factory, especially those of the information boards. Everybody was served tea made from the powder whose processing some of us had witnessed. They also sold a variety of tea powders at the factory.

A man named Kumar offered to drop us to Charring Cross in his taxi for 100 rupees from the Tea Factory. During the drive, he mentioned a few places that most tourists visited and a few things that they usually bought, such as the Nilgiris tea, home-made chocolates, and eucalyptus oil. Apart from this piece of information, I could not understand what he was saying. When he asked us to visit a shop that sold exotic things when in the interim he would wait for his friend, I thought he was strange. The shop sold binoculars, shawls, old-fashioned telephones, and a variety of oils, amongst other things. I bought a bottle of almond oil. After surveying the “curiosity shop”, as my companion called it, we headed to our room.

The furry trees that stood outside the quiet guesthouse formed a striking silhouette during twilight. The bottle of almond oil, which my companion had accidentally dropped when exiting the taxi, was returned to me by a passer-by who, upon thanking him for his generosity, said—with an imitation of a foreign accent—that the town was filled with benevolent people like him.

The program for the following day was to take the toy train to Coonoor early morning and return to Ooty by noon. However, I slept till 11 a.m.;  the day had to be re-planned. We had very few options, bearing in mind that we had to depart the same evening. Lacking the fervour with which I had pursued the journey to the hills, I entered Boat Land. The place appeared fabricated. Poor retired horses were used to tickle people with “horse-rides”, which were actually strolls with the horses. People posed amongst flowers on the green patch of land for pictures. I disliked being there, but I could not express my aversion to my companion, who was looking forward to “riding” on the horse and propelling the boat on dead waters on a sunny afternoon. Soon, he expressed his aversion, too, and we abruptly left the land of loud day-trippers. Outside the commercialised place, there was a board with a list of famous places in and around Ooty. We chose to see one named “Fine Forest”.

Pine forest was located in a downhill region surrounding an arid lake on the other side of which a vast elevated land with a church and a temple stood. Men with their obedient horses and mules took interested tourists for a paid ride quarter way around the rim of the lake. We rambled across the thirsty lake in the hope of seeing lovely sights before quitting our exploration for the day.

It took a while to find the right spot amidst the burnt bushes from where one could cross the creek harmlessly to reach the other side, where the elevated land stood with her arms open. The church was abandoned and the temple locked. A road in the backwoods led to a deserted dam. The peopled spot where we hung around for a short time when we reached the forest seemed distant from across the dam. We had come very far indeed. Below the bridge near the dam, my companion found a cow skull; this deterred us from venturing further into the woods, where once in a while, an animal bawled.

On walking further away from the forest, we reached a suburban area with residential quarters—some inhabited and some vacant. Children who lived in the quarters called out to us wanting to know our names and where we came from. With her foreign accented English, Janani told me that the quarters belonged to the employees of Hindustan Photo Films. They were pleased to meet us just as I was pleased to be in a cool suburban area of Nilgiris West, from where we soon boarded a bus to Ooty.

I think we had an hour and a half to pack our bags and leave the town. The bus to Bangalore was to start from the Ooty bus station at 6 p.m. During checkout, we learnt that the breakfast cost 350 rupees, and neither of us had cash in hand. I asked my companion to rush to an ATM and return with the required amount as soon as possible. What we did not know was that the time was already past 6 p.m. Thanks to my watch, which was 10 minutes behind the actual time, we reached the station after the bus left. Apparently, the bus conductor had tried reaching my companion, who had ignored the call.

We immediately boarded a bus to Masinagudi. The situation upset me. This bus, too, had to traverse 36 hairpin turns. The view of the hills shrouded in darkness seemed ominous to my anxious mind. My companion phoned the bus conductor to know if there was a way we could get on the bus at some point. He asked us to wait at the Coonoor bus stop, where the bus would stop at 8 p.m. But the bus we were seated in was scheduled to reach Coonoor only by 8:15 p.m. To make things worse, we were in the middle of a hairpin zone. I hoped to see lights after the hairpin zone; however, the impending villages were also masked in darkness, and it was difficult to resolve to get off. I described our problem to a fellow passenger who was about to alight. He urged us to leave the bus with him, which we did, and then he found a jeep driver to drop us at Coonoor.

The only illumination throughout the journey was the beaming headlights of the jeep. When I finally contacted the bus conductor, he told us to wait at the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. I was apprehensive because that was 20 minutes further away from Coonoor. The jeep driver said that the fare would increase. And, we did not have enough money in hand. He found an ATM on the way from where we withdrew some money. The drive resumed through the obscure forest.

At the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, our phones showed no bar of connectivity. It was indeed a forest. Lights were forbidden in the region at that time of the night for the sake of wild animals. It was past eight. For over 30 minutes, we waited in pitch darkness, hoping that our bus would emerge. The only comforting sight, besides his face, was that of a tree with her naked branches forming an entrancing outline amidst the bright crescent moon. How divine the image was! But every time I looked away from the tree, I realised the gravity of our situation. The jeep driver was extremely helpful in that he waited with us until our bus arrived and tried calling the bus conductor whenever the number of bars increased on his cell phone. The bus finally emerged, and after a word or two, we found our seats on the bus. It took some time for me to assimilate the entire ordeal of the night spent fortunately with my favourite person.

Everything considered, home-made chocolates are displayed in every bakery in Ooty. Lovely sweaters are sold on the footpath near Charing Cross for 200 rupees and below. Sparrows are a common sight. Stray dogs are more furred. Pine trees are everywhere. And, hairpin bends are inescapable!