Ooty (Ootacamund) is a popular hill station located in the Nilgiri Hills. Udhagamandalam is the official Tamil name for the town. Ooty stands at an approximate height of 7,500 feet (2, 286 m) above sea level.

Ooty also known as Udhagamandalam is the "Queen of hill stations" and the capital of Nilgiris district. It is one of the most popular tourist resorts in India. Nilgiris means "Blue Mountains". It is a land of picturesque picnic spots. Used to be popular summer and weekend getaway for the Britishers during the colonial days. An added attraction for the tourists to Udagamandalam is the mountain train journey on a ratchet and pinion track which commences from Kallar, near Mettupalayam and wends its way through many hair-raising curves and fearful tunnels and chugs along beside deep ravines full of verdant vegetation, gurgling streams and tea gardens.

How to Reach there

Road

Ooty is well connected by good roads. It is 535 km from Chennai (via Salem), 60 km from Coimbatore, 18 km from Coonoor, 155 km from Mysore (via Gudalur), 187 km from Calicut, 290 km from Bangalore, 281 km from Kochi (via Coimbatore and Palakkad), 236 km from Kodaikanal (via Coimbatore and Palani). Ooty is situated on National Highway 67. It is connected by road to travelers from the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka via the five main accepted Nilgiri Ghat Roads. There is also a road from Mettupalayam(Coimbatore District) to Ooty via Kotagiri. This road does not pass through Coonoor.

Ooty, being the district capital, has frequent bus connections from nearby towns in the district such as Coonoor, Kotagiri and Gudalur. There are bus connections to most villages in the district via one of these three towns. There are also frequent bus connections to the nearby mainline railway stations of Mettupalayam and Coimbatore. The town also has direct bus services to various cities and towns of Tamil Nadu, namely Tirupur, Erode, Salem, Sathyamangalam, Karur, Dindigul, Chennai, Thiruchirapalli, Madurai, Thanjavur and Kanyakumari. There are several bus services to and from the nearby cities of Mysore and Kozhikode (in the two bordering states). Direct buses can be boarded for Ooty from many other parts of Karnataka and Kerala, including local connections to Palghat, Nilambur and Sulthan Bathery in Kerala, as well as Gundlupet in Karnataka. The capital cities of these two states (Bangalore and Thiruvananthapuram respectively) as well as Puducherry (Pondicherry) are also connected via direct bus links.

Rail

The Nilagiri passenger train (NMR) on the rack section

Ooty is connected to Chennai (formerly Madras) by a nightly connecting train service. Mettupalayam provides the interchange between 'The Nilagiri Passenger' NMR metre gauge service and the Nilgiri Express broad gauge service. The Nilgiri Mountain Railway (NMR) is one of the oldest mountain railways in India. The NMR was declared by the UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in July 2005. This connects Ootacamund with the town of Mettupalayam, at the foothills of the Nilgiri Mountains. It is the only rack railway in India, and uses the Abt system.

Air

Ooty does not have a civilian airport and is not connected by air. The nearest airport is at Coimbatore which has domestic flights to several major Indian cities and has international flights direct services to Singapore, Sharjah and Colombo. The next nearest airport to Ooty is Calicut Airport which is at a road distance of 146 km west of Ooty.

Steps are being undertaken to start a helicopter shuttle service from the nearest airport to Ooty for fixed wing aircraft which is in Coimbatore. It will initially be serviced by a Bell 407 marketed and run by J.B.Aviation with the aircraft leased from the air service provider Pawan Hans.