Ooty (Udhagamandalam)

Udhagamandalam — Ooty to most — is the headquarters of the Nilgiris district and the most popular hill station in southern India. The British administration developed the town in the 1820s as a summer capital for the Madras Presidency; St Stephen's Church (1829), the Government Botanical Garden (1848), and the Lawrence School Lovedale (1858) all date from that period. The town sits at 2,240 metres in the Western Ghats and stays cool year-round. The headline experience is the Nilgiri Mountain Railway — a UNESCO World Heritage steam-and-diesel rack railway from Mettupalayam to Ooty via Coonoor, climbing 1,712 metres over 46 km. The journey takes 5 hours and is one of the steepest rack railways in Asia. In Ooty itself, regulars combine the Botanical Garden, Ooty Lake, the Government Rose Garden (3,000+ varieties), and a sunrise drive up Doddabetta peak (2,637 m, the highest point in Tamil Nadu).