Day Three: Home but not what we expected!!

Our final day in Ooty today. We left the hotel at about 10am and got a rick down to the bus station. Jumped on a local bus and headed off to Mysore. This is about a 3 hour ride down the hills of Ooty. Once again, scenery to die for......

The ride was hot and sticky as you can feel the temperature increasing the further you go down the mountains.

On the Bandipur National Park. This is the place where 2 years ago we all spent a day at a temporary Elephant Sanctuary which is set up once a year to give about 60 elephants a rest from their time at the Hindu temples. We have some amazing footage. This trip though the forest was meant to different as we were just intending on flying through the forest (and man do you fly on the coaches here!) to get to Mysore where we were due to get a train home.

Much to our surprise and delight we picked a good day to go through the forest.....

We saw 3 sets of wild elephants (this is totally wild forest) plus monkeys and bison and dear. One of the elephants we saw had a baby with her and was also pregnant with another - see the pic to see the baby sticking out the side of it's stomach.

The kids went wild!!

After this treat we ended up in Mysore with about half an hour to spare for lunch. Raj and I grabbed snacks for all 11 of us (!) and then caught ricks to the train station. It's weird, just saying 'we caught ricks to the train station' just doesn't convey anything like what happened. We were in boiling hot, tourist mad, manic Mysore with 6 adults and 5 kids, 3 large rucksacks and half a dozen smaller ruck sacks. 'Jumping in ricks' is therefore a major military manoeuvre!!!

The train ride home was tough for us all - kids especially. It was so hot and busy and the train was delayed time and time again. We ended up travelling from 10am - 7pm! Fortunately the train was less busy towards the end of the journey so the kids used the 3 staged bed set up as a climbing frame!!