Ooty Short Break — Two Nights in the Nilgiris

Met at Coimbatore and driven up through Mettupalayam, where the plains stop and the ghat road starts climbing in earnest — thirty-six numbered hairpins, tea giving way to eucalyptus and then to the open downs. Ooty sits at about 2,240 m and the temperature drop is immediate, so the warm layer wants to be in the day bag rather than the boot. Nothing is scheduled for the afternoon beyond checking in; the lake and the Charing Cross end of town are walkable if you want a first look.

Doddabetta first, because the view goes before the haze builds — on a clear morning you can see across the Nilgiris to the Coimbatore plain. Then the Botanical Gardens below Elk Hill, which are worth the time they take: twenty-two hectares laid out in 1848, with an Italian terrace and a fossilised tree trunk that predates all of it. The afternoon runs down to Coonoor for a tea estate and factory visit, and Sim's Park if there is light left. Coonoor is the quieter of the two towns and the better place for an unhurried hour.

The Nilgiri Mountain Railway is the way to leave. The section down to Coonoor is the one most people take — a rack-and-pinion line opened in 1899, still worked with the original braking arrangement, and slow enough that you can watch the tea change on the way past. The car meets the train and continues to Coimbatore for your onward flight or train. Seats on the railway are limited and released on a fixed schedule; your specialist books them as far ahead as the railway allows, and there is a road alternative if the day's service is cancelled.