Explore Ooty

Ooty-Udhagamandalam, in official records-sits at 2,240 metres in the Nilgiri Hills, a range whose name means Blue Mountains in Tamil. The colour is real: on mornings after rain, the eucalyptus and shola forest that covers the upper slopes takes on a grey-blue haze that you can see for 40 kilometres. It is one of the most distinctive landscapes in South India, and the reason the British colonial administration chose it as their summer capital in the 19th century. The Savoy IHCL Selections, built in 1829, is the oldest operational heritage hotel in India. The original timbered buildings, the lawns where the first roses of the season appear in April, and the dining room with its fireplace still running on cold December evenings are not period recreations. They are the original fabric of the building, maintained continuously for nearly 200 years. Staying here is the most direct way to understand what the Nilgiris meant to the people who built them. The Nilgiri Mountain Railway-the UNESCO World Heritage Toy Train-runs from Mettupalayam at the foot of the Nilgiri escarpment to Ooty, covering 46 kilometres in approximately 5 hours. The route passes through 16 tunnels and over 250 bridges, climbing from 326 metres to 2,203 metres via a rack-and-pinion system that was the engineering marvel of 1908 when the line opened. Most packaged tours do a short segment. Alike's itinerary includes the full journey from Mettupalayam-or the Ooty to Coonoor section for travellers on shorter itineraries-because the experience of the line is in the totality of the climb, not a sample of it. Coonoor, 18 kilometres from Ooty on a lower ridge at 1,800 metres, is where the Nilgiri tea is grown in quantity. The gardens that supply Makaibari and Kotagiri teas are in the hills surrounding Coonoor. An Alike-curated tea estate walk includes a guided tasting with an estate manager-not a tourism experience bolted onto a working farm, but an introduction to the people and processes of one of India's most significant tea geographies. The Botanical Gardens (founded 1848, 22 hectares, over 1,000 species including a 20-million-year-old tree fossil) and Doddabetta Peak (2,637 metres, the highest point in the Nilgiris) are the standard Ooty inclusions. The annual Flower Show in May is a genuine horticultural event-150 years old and still drawing serious gardeners from across South India.