New Delhi, May 5 -- For somebody who used to spend the entire month of May playing cricket, Bertie is sheepish to admit that the Mumbai heat now gets to him. His colleague who tracks public holidays like a hawk informed him that after Labour Day, there was no public holiday till Independence Day in August. This and the muggy weather convinced Bertie that a quick dash to a cooler clime was justified. He fired up his favourite AI tool to search for places within a six-hour radius and an assured temperature of less than 30 degrees Celsius. In consultation with the missus, he zeroed in on Ooty: a place he hadn't visited in over 30 years and the only memory he had of it was a faded photograph of him astride a pony.

Ooty lived up to its weathe...