Transport

The Nagapattinam - Gudalur National Highway Passes through this district. The Nilgiris Ghat Roads link the district with the nearest cities in Tamilnadu, Kerala and Karnataka. All the Taluk are connected with Major District Roads. The village roads are maintained by Panchayat Union. The Nilgiris Mountain Railway from Mettupalayam to Udhagamandalam via Coonoor is a great tourist attraction. It was used in the film A Passage to India as the railway to the caves. It is a rack railway as far as Coonoor. The Nilgiris Mountain Railway , is now a World Heritage Site This services many of the populated areas of the district including Coonoor,Wellington , Aruvankadu, Ketti ,Lovedale and Ooty . There is no sea port or Airport in the district. The nearest international airport to the Nilgiris is at Coimbatore

Bus Services

Ooty, being district capital, has the most frequent bus connections from nearby large towns in the district (such as Coonoor, Kotagiri and Gudalur ). There are bus connections to most villages in the district via one of three towns. There are also frequent bus connections to the nearest mainline railheads of Mettupalayam and Coimbatore.

As Ooty is in Tamilnadu state most direct bus connections are from towns in this state:

Medium haul origins: Tirupur , Erode , Salem , Sathyamangalam , Karur and Dindigul

Long haul express routes from: Chennai , Thiruchirapalli , Madurai , Thanjavur and Kanyakumari

There are several buses from the nearest large main cities of Mysore and Kozhikode (in the two bordering states). Direct buses can be boarded for Ooty from many other parts of Karnataka and Kerala, including local connections to Palghat and Sultans Battery in Kerala, as well as Gundlupet in Karnataka. The capital cities of these two states ( Bangalore and Thiruvananthapuram respectively) as well as Union Territory of Puducherry are also connected via direct bus links.

Train links

Ooty is connected to Chennai (formally Madras) by a nightly connecting train service. Mettupalayam provides the interchange between 'The Nilgiris Passenger' NMR meter gauge service and the Nilgiris Express broad gauge service. The complete journey on these two trains takes 16 hours. This journey can be shortened considerably by avoiding the NMR and taking road transport from Ooty to the broad gauge railhead at Mettupalayam (40 km from Ooty by road), or traveling further to Coimbatore for more rail services. Coimbatore has several rail links to destinations across India. In addition to the 'Nilgiris Express' which also stops in Coimbatore there are more trains from Coimbatore to Chennai.