EC-Rider Travels

After a nice breakfast with Ram, Mariam and I bid him farewell and headed for the airport for an internal flight to Coimbatore where we were met by Bala who was to drive us the three hours to Ooty. It was a very beautiful, but unbelievably windy road, up, up, up into the hills, with monkeys waving us along as we drove higher around fourteen hairpin bends …. not that I was counting! My goodness drivers here are brave, with no rules of the road apart from ‘who dares, wins’, taking on these bends is quite something. You can see nothing coming the other way and it is usually a bus! Anyway Bala had done it before and got us to Mariam’s house, , safe and sound, if feeling a little queezy.

Ooty (short for Udhagamandalam) is high up in the Western Ghats mountains (2,240m) and was once a British Raj summer resort. It retains some of its colonial past with a few lovely old buildings amongst a rather chaotic and busy town. It was originally occupied by the Toda people, some of whom remain here today and sound the most fascinating community. Tea and vegetables are grown as well as the manufacturing of medicines and photographic film.

Glyngarth could not be less what you expect in the hills of India, in fact if looks as though it might be more at home in the hills of Perthshire with its turrets and columned portico. It sits handsomely on the top of a hill overlooking Ooty and is quite something. Mariam and Ram bought the house about ten years ago, took three years to move the tenant out and then moved Henrietta Spencer Churchill in who, with Mariam, has done the most incredible job restoring it to, I would suggest, very much more than its former glory. My bedroom is the size of the whole of Smith Terrace with the most stunning four poster bed from Indonesia and a gorgeous tiled shower in one of the turrets. There is the most amazing collection of contemporary art on every wall and just in case I was not comfortable enough, more lovely staff than I have ever seen. I think I will be very happy here!

Soon after we arrived, Mariam’s cousin Thankan and her New Zealand husband Don arrived and the first thing to do was of course to meet Mariam’s Newfoundland, Sukho. He is beyond huge and has a lovely man who looks after him and I think shares his room (not kennel!). We then met his nemesis, Zak, the Persian cat who has taken up residence in the double garage, having pushed the cars outside! You get the picture! I had not appreciated Mariam’s love of animals and apparently there are many more to meet tomorrow.

The drop in temperature from Chennai is extraordinary, almost cold – which is rather refreshing after the last few months, though needless to say, I don’t really have the right clothes with me!

We had a delicious dinner together, Thankan, is completely hysterical and wonderfully irreverent about all her relatives, I think it could be a very funny few days. Early bed in my blissful four-poster…..