At school, all of us took great pride in saying 'Udagamandalam'; I'm not quite sure why. We also felt very proud when we managed to say Udagamandalam while playing 'Place-Place'. (Everyone knows the game, and in India, we must repeat. Teacher-Teacher. School-School. Place-Place. All of that.)Yesterday, I realised that here in Tamil Nadu, we spell it Udhagamandalam because, you see, the first /d/ is soft different from the second, hard /d/. We must make that clear! So Udhagamandalam, it is. Past Wellington, past Coonoor, and all the way up to Udhagamandalam.I do wish we'd taken the charming toy train up to Ooty, but as my characters say in The Toy Train, it takes too long. We saw the train at Coonoor station, we crossed the tiny narrow gauge rail tracks, and sighed. Next time, we said, next time.This time, we drove up, enjoying the view of tea estates, stopping … [Read more...]