Ooty is a hill station way up in the mountains of southern India. Hill stations where were the British used to come during the summer months to escape the heat. They are also home to some of the country's biggest tea plantations. We started our day in a muggy, hot, tropical climate driving through a jungle nature preserve. By the end of the day, we were passing pine trees and vegetation that sort of reminded me of the Pacific Northwest. The drive up was absolutely amazing! We climbed up the valley in jeeps the road was steep and twisting and there were signs at every hairpin turn reminding drivers how many people had died there in previous years. The views were stunning we looked down on the lush valley and up at bare, rocky, craggy peaks mostly hidden by the clouds. The road was carved into the steep slopes and there were trees hugging the rocks along the mountain side. We passed villages and single homes built into terraces that were very close to what I imagine the South American villages up in the Andes look like. When we left the mountain side and drove through valley was when the vegetation turned from the scrubby, rock hugging trees, to tall ancient pines and ferns. The weather was perfectly cold and the air felt so pure and clean. (sorry about the quality of the pictures for some reason this time they didn't upload in the best quality)  |
| A view shot looking back into the valley we started from taken from the bus. It's hard to get a scope of the height and elevation was well as the drop off. |
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| One of the small, single homes along the road on the way up. |
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| From left to right, Hannah (Germany), Sabrina (Austria), and Dascha (Oregon) sitting on their balcony at our hotel looking down on the town of Ooty. |
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| A view from one of the highest peaks in South India. |
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| All around Ooty were hundreds of tea plantations. |
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| We saw a family of wild elephants grazing near the road along a lake in Ooty. |
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| A walk in a tea plantation. |
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| The road on the way down crossed over a river and waterfall. |
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| A larger than life sized carved statue of Shiva's bull. The three main Hindu gods each have a "vehicle that they use for transportation and Shiva's is this bull. |
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| Belur is one of two temples that were built in to be a pair 16 kms apart. They two temples, Belur and Haldbidu are considered to be the most beautiful and detailed pieces of architecture in the state of Karnataka. They took hundreds of year to finish and were once at the heart of the Hoysala Empire. |
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| The guide was demonstrating the detail by showing that each section is full carved through enough to stick a straw through. Yet the whole section is one stone, so one mistake and everything had to be restarted. |
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| The temple was made in a sort of cross or plus sign shape. This is one of the extending arms ( I don't know how else to describe it). The main section of the temple was in the center of the cross and each arm had a little, minor shrine on it. |
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| Each of the 12 (I think) layer represented something else and were carved with great detail. No elephant, dancer, flower, or animal was exactly the same and these layer went all the way around the temple. |
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| The top of the gate leading into the temple compound. |
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| Southern India's (and maybe all of India) biggest botanical garden in Mysore (23rd November). |
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| A temple in the garden. |
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| The rest of the pictures on this post are from a temple we visited. The temple itself isn't even visible in this picture. We had to climb hundreds of carved stairs to reach it (I forget the exact number) |
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| About a third of the way up... |
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| The last portion of climbing was sort of inside an exterior wall or compound that contained stairs and some small temples) |
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| Looking back over the landscape there was a rainbow. |
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| This statue is hundreds of feet tall and he stood in the middle of the temple at the top of the mountain. |
