The best Rose Garden in the World

I went to Ooty with my college batchmates in March 2009. It was a week-long trip where we travelled from Pondicherry to Ooty, via Coonoor. Coonoor and Ooty are hill-stations in the Nilgiri hills, in Nilgiri district of Tamil Nadu.

Ooty is short for Ootacamund, and is also known as Udagamandalam in Tamil. It’s a picturesque town with a cooler climate than the neighbouring plains.

Ooty boasts of a remarkable range of flora because of the suitable climate. This combination draws a large number of tourists to Ooty and it is regarded as “The Queen of Hill-stations.”

Popular attractions in Ooty are the Government Botanical Park, the Rose Garden, Charing Cross in the middle of Ooty town, Pykara Falls, Doddabetta Peak – the tallest hill in South India, the Ooty Lake, Pine Forest – where Tamil movies are sometimes shot at,  the tea plantations, and the Nilgiri Mountain Railways.

The Government Rose Garden, sometimes also known as the Centenary Rose Park, is situated at a walking distance from the town. It boasts of itself as “The Best Rose Park in the World”. It won the The World Federation of Rose Societies “Garden of Excellence Award” for being the best rose garden in South Asia, in May 2006, in Osaka, Japan.

It has the largest collection of rose varieties in India with 20,000 different varieties of hybrid and miniature roses, and roses in unusual colours such as black and green.