Ooty (Udhagamandalam)
The hill station above the forest, and the classic day trip from Masinagudi.
- Type
- Hill station
- District
- The Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu
- From Masinagudi
- Day trip via Kalhatti or Gudalur
- Note
- Kalhatti route has tight hairpins — check suitability for your vehicle
Ooty is the other Nilgiris — colder, greener, busier, and about 2,000 metres higher than Masinagudi. The drive up is the good part: a series of hairpins that climb out of dry forest into tea country in under an hour of road.
The Drive Up
The Masinagudi–Ooty road via Kalhatti is short in kilometres and long in hairpins — spectacular, and best suited to smaller vehicles and drivers who enjoy a ghat road. If that is not your idea of a holiday, the longer route via Gudalur is much gentler and just as pretty. Both change with the monsoon, so do ask us which is in better shape the week you visit.
What to Do There
Ooty Lake, the Government Botanical Garden, the Nilgiri Mountain Railway and the tea estates around Coonoor. It is a full day, not a half day.
Ooty or Masinagudi?
They are two quite different holidays, and happily you do not have to choose. Ooty is a hill town of gardens, tea and cold evenings; Masinagudi is forest, wildlife and deep quiet. Most of our guests stay down here where it is warmer and calmer, and head up for a day.
Weather
Ooty is significantly colder. Carry a jacket even if Masinagudi is warm when you leave.
Where to Base Yourself
Both Avenue Tree properties are in Masinagudi, which is the practical base for this part of the landscape — close enough to the gates for an early start, far enough from the highway to be quiet.
Labdhi Resorts
Warm timber rooms, home-cooked vegetarian food and an easy drive to the Mudumalai safari gates.
View Labdhi Resorts →Aranyasun
Three-quarters of an acre of garden beside Masinagudi village, looked after by a family of Nilgiri tea planters.
View Aranyasun →Plan Around It
Stay a Short Drive from Ooty
Two warm places to stay, one beautiful corner of the Nilgiris, and a travel desk that really does know these roads. Send us your dates and we will help you shape the days around them.
Or enquire now and we will reply the same day.