Sim's Park

1.6 km · 20 min walk

A UNESCO World Heritage metre-gauge rack railway connecting Mettupalayam to Ooty via Coonoor, opened in stages between 1899 and 1908.

A rocky outcrop near Coonoor offering sweeping views of the Nilgiri escarpment, Catherine Falls, and the plains below.

A viewpoint near Coonoor overlooking tea and coffee plantations and the Coimbatore plains, named after a former collector of the region.

Droog Fort sits at about 6,000 feet on a hilltop roughly 13 km from Coonoor and is reached by a trek through tea estates and shola. It is said to have been used as an outpost by Tipu Sultan in the 18th century, with surviving remnants including a wall and a clock tower. The summit gives sweeping views over the plains and hills.

1.4 km · 17 min walk

Law's Falls lies about 5 km from Coonoor on the Coonoor-Mettupalayam ghat road, where the Coonoor river drops through a wooded gorge. It is named after Colonel Law, who built the Coonoor ghat road in the 1830s. Surrounded by dense greenery, it is a relatively uncrowded picnic spot.

Ralliah (Rallia) Dam sits on the Coonoor-Kattabettu-Kotagiri road and was built in 1914 as a catchment supplying drinking water to Coonoor and Kotagiri. Ringed by eucalyptus forest and reached by a short walk, it is a peaceful, little-visited spot popular for gentle trekking.

530 m · 7 min walk

Lady Canning's Seat is an elevated colonial-era vantage point near Coonoor named after the wife of Lord Canning, Viceroy of India. It is prized for its sunrise and sunset views over the surrounding valleys and tea slopes.

Kattery Park is a horticultural park spread over about 5.5 acres near Coonoor, with landscaped flower beds, a children's play area and a small waterfall on the Kallar river nearby. It is a compact garden stop on the outskirts of the town.

1.0 km · 12 min walk

An Anglican church in Coonoor, now of the Church of South India, on the Kattabettu road out of the town — stained glass, antique woodwork and an old pipe organ in a Gothic hall. Its founding is published as both 1851 and 1854 and we have found no official source that settles it, so both are printed. We have no checked coordinate for it, so no distance to it is printed.

1.6 km · 20 min walk

The hinge of the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, 370 m from the Coonoor bus stand. The Abt rack section that carries the train up the gorge from Kallar ends at this platform and the run on to Udhagamandalam above it is worked on plain track, which is why the locomotive shed is here and why the Coonoor-Ooty shuttles exist. Southern Railway gives the whole line as 45.88 km of metre gauge, opened to Coonoor on 15 June 1899.

190 m · 2 min walk

A vaccine institute on sixteen acres above the town, founded after Lily Pakenham Walsh died of hydrophobia in 1902 without reaching treatment in time. One lakh rupees of Henry Phipps's gift to Lord Curzon paid for it, Coonoor was chosen for its cool and equitable climate, and it began work on 6 April 1907. It has made antirabies vaccine ever since and DPT vaccines since 1982. A manufacturer, not a clinic.

A working tea factory 9.5 km east of the Coonoor bus stand on the estate road toward the viewpoints, where the leaf from the surrounding slopes is withered, rolled, oxidised and graded. Coonoor has been the administrative centre of the Nilgiri tea trade since the first plantation in these hills was established beside it in 1854.

A waterfall 11.5 km west of Coonoor below the Katary dams, on a different catchment from the Ralliah dam east of the town despite the similar name - a confusion that had put Ralliah's own pin ten kilometres out until it was corrected. Reached off the Coonoor-Ooty road and far less visited than Catherine Falls.

800 m · 10 min walk

The junction a kilometre above the bus stand where the town's shops give out and the estate roads begin, and the second place in Coonoor to find an auto. The tea slopes above it run up to Highfield, and the road east from here is the one that leads to Lamb's Rock and Dolphin's Nose.

880 m · 11 min walk

Highfield is a long-established tea estate and working factory near Coonoor that offers guided tours explaining the tea-making process from plucking to packaging. Visitors can walk the plantation slopes and buy estate-fresh Nilgiri tea, making it one of Coonoor's popular tea-tourism stops.