Tourists throng Ooty thanks to extended weekend

UDHAGAMANDALAM: More than 38,600 tourists visited Ooty in the last four days starting Friday, due to the extended weekend and the surge in temperature in the plains. The hill station received summer showers on Saturday and Sunday.
Braving the cold and wet weather in Ooty, tourists, mainly from other parts of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, thronged all the tourist spots, including Government Botanical Garden (GBG), Government Rose Garden and the Ooty Lake. According to the GBG officials, about 38,616 tourists visited the botanical garden in the past three days till Monday.
All the hotels in the town were fully packed. It was good business for all the hoteliers. The crowd was surprisingly heavy.
Ramakrishnan from Chennai said, “In connection with Tamil New Year, govt offices got three days of holidays. It is a brief escape for us from the scorching heat.”
However, the procedure of e-pass registration to enter the Nilgiris saw some lapses, as the e-pass checking was not proper at a few checkposts.
According to the district administration, the number of vehicles with e-pass reached the saturation point of 6,000 vehicles during weekdays and 8,000 during weekends as directed by the Madras high court.
Pranesh, a resident, said, “Our family friend and his family came from Kerala without an e-pass (which they did not know) and passed through Nadugani checkpost, and they were not checked for e-pass.” Other residents also said there were lapses in checking e-pass at all the checkposts.