Out & about
Sports, Clubs & Leisure
The Nilgiris' clubs, courses and pastimes — from the colonial Ooty Club where snooker was born to hill golf, the summer races, trout lakes and family days out.
Clubs & institutions
Ooty
Ootacamund Club
The Nilgiris' grandest colonial club, founded in 1841 — and the birthplace of snooker, devised here in 1875. Panelled halls, rosewood furniture and hunting trophies; membership is private, but its place in Ooty's story is unmatched.
DetailsCoonoor
Coonoor Club
Coonoor's historic planters' club, a fixture of the town's social life since 1885.
DetailsOoty
The Nilgiri Library
A heritage subscription library founded in 1858 (its present building opened in 1869), holding 30,000+ volumes — including rare works on the Nilgiris and its hill tribes.
DetailsGolf
Wenlock Downs · Ooty
Ootacamund Gymkhana Golf Club
An 18-hole course laid out from 1889 across the rolling Wenlock Downs at around 7,000 ft — among the finest natural golf settings in the country.
DetailsWellington · Coonoor
Wellington Gymkhana Club
One of India's oldest clubs (1873), set in a valley between Wellington and Coonoor, with a celebrated 18-hole hill golf course and a long army heritage.
DetailsSport & the outdoors
Ooty
The Ooty Races
Summer horse racing at the high-altitude Ooty Race Course, run by the Madras Race Club — morning meetings from April to June, a Nilgiris tradition since the 1890s.
DetailsOoty
Trout Fishing — Avalanche, Emerald & Parsons Valley
Permit-based trout angling on the high shola lakes — Avalanche, Emerald and Parsons Valley — stocked with trout since colonial days and set amid some of the Nilgiris' wildest country.
DetailsOoty
Boating & Horse Riding, Ooty Lake
Pedal- and row-boats from the lakeside boathouse and pony rides along the shore — the classic family afternoon on Ooty Lake.
DetailsEntertainment
Ooty
Wax World
A wax museum in a 130-year-old colonial mansion near town, with figures of India's freedom fighters and dioramas of rural Indian life.
DetailsOoty
Thread Garden
Hundreds of life-like flowers and plants hand-made entirely from thread — no machines or needles — beside Ooty Lake.
DetailsOoty
Thunder World
A dinosaur-themed amusement park near Ooty Lake with a 5D theatre, snow room and illusion galleries — a hit with families.
DetailsMuthorai Palada · Ooty
Tribal Research Centre Museum
A government museum at Muthorai Palada documenting the Nilgiris' indigenous communities — Toda, Kota, Irula, Kurumba and Paniya — their tools, crafts and ways of life.
DetailsWellington · Coonoor
Madras Regimental Centre Museum
The regimental museum of the Madras Regiment — one of the Indian Army's oldest infantry regiments — with arms, medals, uniforms and a war memorial, on the military campus at Wellington.
Details