Ooty, or Udhagamandalam if you prefer

We arrived in Ooty and began the hunt for a guesthouse... after a pricey one we found the green view (or green valley) guest house.  As soon as we took a room an Italian, David, asked if we wanted to do a  hiking trip the next morning... I was quite game, as that is what we came to do.  Then a guy I had met at the ashram came walking down the hall with his yoga mat and we had a funny reunion...what are the odds that we would be in the same hotel on the same floor right across fro each other 1 week after last meeting?!  He let me know that the roof was great for yoga (the asanas part...there are many other parts of yoga other than the moving of the body!  There is also a big part involving not moving the body or mind for that matter and also on how to conduct yourself... if you are bored or interested look up yamas and niyamas)

That night the German from the ashram (Yan) and his friend, the Italian and his friend (Sarah) and Sam and I all went out for a feast that couldn't be beat and didn't get up until the very next morning to start our hike!
Actaully we started with some yoga and breakfast and then met our guide.

Rajiv was/is a super interesting fellow.  He knows lots about the local flora and fauna and even more about everything.  It was hard to find a topic he couldn't converse about and he took a real pleasure in showing us around.  We were so excited about the cooler temperatures that we didn't realize the sun was equally strong as in the rest of India!  We all got great burns but it was worth it!  The scenery was completely unexpected, beautiful mountains and grasslands and we walked through a tea plantation, picking some for ourselves...

There were many people working with giant baskets hanging on their backs strapped to their foreheads, and they were moving a little faster than us...  All tea comes form the same plant, white, green and black that is, obviously mint is something else!  It depends what part of the leaves you use and how it dries...if you take just the one new budding leaf that will be for white tea which is what we did and it was really yummy!

After that day we were quite tired but agreed to go for another hike the next day!  That night was dinner and bed again!  Somehow I was quite allergic to my room and couldn't stop sneezing all night...  During the days it took a couple hours for my nose to stop running too...it was pleasant and unpleasant for me in Ooty!

The second hike was even more incredible than the first...we walked through rolling hills of grassland, something I have always wanted to do!  Not to need a trail but not being in a flat field, it was just beautiful...
Both days we stopped to visit hill tribes who served us chai and we relaxed and saw where they lived... On the first day we got carrots picked right out of the ground, they were incredible! The best part was how juicy they were, almost like a fruit!

It was hard to decide if I should head back south into Kerala where there are beaches and the other Sivananda ashram in the south or head north towards Hampi, but in the end Hampi won and I set off with Sarah, a British lass who had been sharing the guest house with us in Ooty...

Ooty was really beautiful and there was much more to explore in the city that I didn't get too.  Lots of Indian tourists go there as well, so there are shopping districts and restaurants on the mountainsides. If there weren't cows roaming the streets and rivers of poop and sewage lining the roads it could almost have been a city not quite entirely unlike something you would find in BC...  That might have made it sound a little smelly, which it was, but no worse than anywhere else...what I was really trying to say is that if you are in India got to OOTY!