Two months after our train journey in Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka we rode the famous, century old, Nilgiri Mountain Rail steam train from Mettupalayam to Ooty. It was a train ride from one pretty dirty, small Indian town with an elevation of 300m to another small, dirty Indian town with an elevation of 2,200. The distance between them is only 46 km but the journey takes over 5 hours via steam train. Tickets can be purchased an hour before departure at 5am. In India it meant that we had to be wide awake two hours before that. Train cars in India are never empty, so seats fill up pretty quickly and this tourist train was no different. So we stayed in accommodation at the station in the hope of securing a spot at the front of the queue. Fun times.
The train was so old that had to be checked, oiled and refilled with water at every stop, of which there were many. Every now and then, between the stops when tourists left to take photos, gangs of monkeys would sneak into the carriages to steel food, one even attempted to steal a phone. The train progressed into densely forested hills, passing vast and vivid green farming terraces and slopes, until eventually houses started to come into view.
