Coonoor is the quieter sister of Ooty, and most riders who know both prefer it. It sits at about 1,800 metres on the Nilgiri plateau in Tamil Nadu, on the slopes above a deep valley, and it lives on tea. Plantations cover the hills around the town in neat green ridges, with pickers moving between the rows, and factories along the roads sell fresh leaf and chocolate. The army town of Wellington lies right next door, a little under two kilometres away, and Kotagiri is ten kilometres on. Coonoor itself has fuel pumps and everything else you need.
The ride up from the plains is the real event. After the heat of the flatlands, the road climbs the ghats in a long series of hairpins through forest and plantation, and the temperature drops noticeably as you rise. Monkeys sit on the walls and buses take the corners wide, so go carefully on the blind ones. Mist and rain appear quickly, especially in the monsoon, and the surface can be greasy under the trees. A cold, fresh morning in winter is the finest time, when the views across the valleys are clear.
Coonoor has colonial roots. British officers and administrators built bungalows and churches here to escape the summer heat, and the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, a rack-and-pinion line that is a UNESCO World Heritage site, still climbs up from Mettupalayam, with old steam locomotives on part of the run. Sim's Park, a botanical garden laid out in the 1870s, is a pleasant place to rest, and Dolphin's Nose viewpoint looks down a huge drop.
For food, try the local tea at a roadside stall, and eat dosas, parottas or a plain thali in town. The air smells of eucalyptus and wet earth, which is the real smell of the Nilgiris. The hills have a long tradition of tea, and the Nilgiri variety is light, fragrant and good with milk or without. If you can, stay a night and walk among the bushes at dawn, when the whole plateau looks scrubbed clean.