Pykara Falls

An artificial lake created in 1824 by John Sullivan, the founder of Ooty, now used for boating amid eucalyptus-lined banks.

A terraced garden of 55 acres below Doddabetta, run by the Tamil Nadu Horticulture Department, holding a fossilised tree trunk reckoned at 20 million years old and hosting the flower show every May. Its founding year is published two ways, 1848 and 1897.

The highest peak in the Nilgiris and in Tamil Nadu, with a telescope house at the top. Three arms of the government publish three different heights for it — 2,623 m, 2,636 m and 2,637 m.

Four hectares in five terraces on the slopes of Elk Hill, with more than 3,000 varieties of roses on the district administration’s own count, and an International Rose Society award for the best rose garden in South Asia in 2006.

2.0 km · 25 min walk

The reservoir on the Pykara river 22.2 km from the Ooty bus stand by routed road, with a boathouse running motorboat trips over water ringed by pine, shola and grassland; gaur graze the banks. The river above it is held sacred by the Toda, and the falls two kilometres downstream are part of the same site.

A reservoir among sholas and grassland on the road toward Upper Bhavani, 22.5 km from the Ooty bus stand by routed road — the district and the municipality both publish it as 28 km. It sits inside a protected forest zone where access is controlled, so check before setting out.

Consecrated in 1830, this is the oldest church in the Nilgiris, built partly from timber salvaged from Tipu Sultan's summer palace in Srirangapatna.

A working tea factory near Ooty with a small museum explaining tea-processing history and a shop selling estate teas.

8.1 km · ~14 min by cab

A waterfall on the Ooty-Gudalur road near Kalhatti village, plunging beside an old Shiva shrine set into the rock.

A quiet reservoir near Avalanche in the upper Nilgiris, surrounded by tea plantations and sholas, less visited than Ooty Lake.