Trip to Ooty: Day 2: Part 1: Ooty Lake – Boat House and Thread garden, Ooty Tamil Nadu AdmirableIndia.com

Trip to Ooty: Day 2: Part 1: Ooty Lake – Boat House and Thread garden, Ooty

18th July 2008, 11:00 pm

You can read the previous post on Trip to Ooty: Day 1

I got up late at 7 am, usually in trips I get up early about 5 or 5.30 but our bus for the trip was scheduled to come at 9.45 so its good to sleep nicely. I ordered some tea and took my camera and rushed to the balcony to take some shots:

View from balcony

Then, we got ready and came out of the Nalapad residency to check out the lawn. The lawn was beautiful and there were many flowers:

Flower

It was 9.15 am and there was time so I took a lot of shots of flowers in the lawn. Here’s the other one, which I like:

Flower
Just near the hotel I found a great view of cabbage plantation:

Cabbage Plantation

For more photos of flowers at Nalapad Residency, click here.

The tourist bus came at 9.45 and we got in for sightseeing. It took a while for all the other fellow travelers to come and we started our journey. The first spot was Ooty Lake also known as Boat House. Ooty Lake is just behind the main bus stand of Ooty and the railway line runs along one of the banks of the lake itself. The lake stretches in an irregular ‘L’ shape, for about two kilometers in length and varying distances in width. At the far end is the Boat House where all kinds of boats are available for hire from eight in the morning to six in the evening. This lake was artificially formed by Johm Sullivan, the founder of Ooty, in 1823-25 by damming the mountain streams flowing down Ooty valley. Entry fee for boathouse is Rs. 5 per head and there is a camera fee of Rs. 10.

Ooty lake

There are a lot of boats available. The charges are given below:

Type of Boats	Hours	Tariff
8 Seater Motor Boat	20 Mts.	Rs. 200
10 Seater Motor Boat	20 Mts.	Rs. 250
15 Seater Motor Boat	20 Mts.	Rs. 375
2 Seater Row Boat	30 Mts.	Rs. 60
4 Seater Row Boat	30 Mts.	Rs. 60
6 Seater Row Boat	30 Mts.	Rs. 90
Aqua Byke	30 Mts.	Rs. 60
2 Seater Pedal Boat	30 Mts.	Rs. 60
4 Seater Pedal Boat	30 Mts.	Rs. 100

Boats at Ooty lake

There is also a toy train in the children’s park just near the boat house.

Toy Train

The next attraction was pony ride. I wanted to have a ride but Lucky refused, may be she was scared

Pony ride

For more photos of Ooty lake, click here.

Just opposite of the lake there was a board “Thread garden” and we went to check out what’s that. Entry ticket was Rs. 10 per head and the camera charge was Rs. 15. It was like a normal garden and I was disappointed that we paid unnecessarily. But, a man came and started explaining about the garden: Thread garden is an artificial embroidery garden bearing natural models of plants and flowers fully developed of embroidery threads using technology of hand wound embroidery without needles or machineries, taking 12 years with the effort of 50 lady artists, using more than 6 crore meters of embroidery threads. Well, then, I took my camera out and clicked:

Thread Garden

For more photos of Thread garden, click here.

The garden looked so real. Can you believe that it is made up of embroidery threads? After that we went to check out a nearby flower shop. I did not took any flowers but I took some nice shots:

Flower at Flower shop

For more photos of flower shop, click here.

By that time I was feeling hungry and I scanned the whole place for breakfast. What I found was better than the typical breakfast. I took a bundle of carrots for Rs. 10 and a packet of lychee for Rs. 20. The carrots were very fresh and the lady was washing them off and selling. It was the best carrots I ever tasted. After a nice breakfast we moved to our next spot Ketty Valley View.
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