Ooty, India: back in time to the birthplace of snooker

It all started with a visit to my optician in Bristol. While Mr Shah shone lights into my eyes, I said, by way of polite conversation, that I was intending to visit the lovely Nilgiri Hills in southern India.

“Ah,” said Mr Shah, “will you visit Ooty”?

“Yes I could, why?”

“Well,” he said, “I was having a drink in the Ooty colonial club with a couple of friends when we were asked to leave because we were improperly dressed – despite the fact,” he laughed, “we were literally the only people in the whole place. If you go you simply have to visit the Ooty colonial club, it’s like stepping back in time.”

And so a scheme was hatched. I would go to the Nilgiri, hire an old-fashioned Bullet motorcycle and ride to Ooty. I would find the club and go for a drink in the bar – in correct attire of course.

Ooty is one of 65 hill stations set up across India by the British. Being up a hill allowed relief from the searing Indian summer. Ooty was known as “the queen of the hill stations”. It lies among luxuriant forests and, at over 7,000ft above sea level, it’s deliciously cool.

On January 2 1819, John Sullivan, a junior official with the British East India company, set out to explore the Nilgiris (Nil is Hindi for blue, so Nilgiri roughly translates as the blue hills) after obtaining an order charging him to investigate the “origin of the fabulous tales that are circulated concerning the Blue Mountains to verify their authenticity and to send a report to the authorities”.

^{The Nilgiri Hills in southern India (Photo: Alamy)}

Sullivan discovered a natural wonderland and in 1822, having bought a parcel of land from the local Toda people for one rupee, built his wife and himself a house. John Sullivan’s “Stone House” still stands and is the oldest building in the town he founded at “Ootacamund” – now usually shortened to Ooty. Initially this was a place soldiers came to convalesce but fairly soon it became a home away from home for the British. Bungalows sprang up with neat gardens, two churches, a golf club, gymkhanas and, inevitably, a club for the great and good, the Ootacamund Club, founded in 1841.

I kicked the borrowed Bullet to life and set off. It was hot where I was staying down on the plains. I rode through bamboo forest and swerved around monkeys and suicidal spotted deer. I was serenaded by the enthusiastic horn blowing of every passing truck driver, all of whom appeared hugely amused to see a pink-faced foreigner in cream linen jacket, shirt and tie thudding along on a Bullet. Then it was time to tackle the 36 hairpin bends on the way up to Ooty, each apex adorned with encouraging slogans, “For free ambulance call…”, “Hospital ceilings are boring, avoid accident, drive safe!”. I stopped on the way for a refreshing spicy masala chai.

Having found my way to the club, I was immediately barred from entering by a security guard. Eventually, mollified by an intense charm offensive and perhaps my impressive-looking university tie, the guard relented and I was permitted to ride up to the imposing frontage of the colonial club.

The club house was built in 1836 by Sir William Rumbold, a wealthy merchant who died almost as soon as it was finished. It was then rented as the summer residence of the governor-general, before the club took it over in 1842.

I met the club secretary, Jimmy Kamdin, who showed me around.

Set among an abundance of teak and polished rosewood, it turned out every room had a tale to tell.

Our first stop was the ballroom, empty when I visited, but not always. “We roll up the carpets and get in a band for a club dance four times a year,” said Jimmy.

The array of animal remains adorning the walls was fascinating. Along with the tigers and leopards you might expect was a lion’s head. Was it one of the vanishingly rare Asiatic lions, now only found in one small forest in Gujarat on the other side of India? How did it get here? Jimmy did not know. There was a large bear – and there, too, the skin and head of an Indian wild dog, a dhole, an animal that, despite my best efforts, I have never seen.

A maze of corridors took us to the billiard room. “This is where snooker was invented,” said Jimmy. I laughed politely. “No, really it was…” And it’s true. A framed letter from the inventor of snooker, Sir Neville Chamberlain (not the PM, another Sir Neville) outlines how it happened. Snooker, now a worldwide phenomenon, was invented right here, in this very room on this very billiards table (made by Burroughes and Watts, 19 Soho Square, brought over by boat).

Finally we arrived at the object of my quest, the mixed bar, the place from which my optician and his friends had been ejected. A strict dress code still endures, as do the rules about who may enter. I ordered and looked around. It was an astonishing sight. Wooden boards with lists of names embossed in gold lined the walls. I assumed these might be presidents of the club but no, the snarling heads at the apex of each board should have given me a clue. Here were the names of the masters of the Ooty fox hounds, stretching back to 1845. Ooty was to be a little bit of England, a home away from home, so what could be more British than a hunt?

They imported the hounds but, of course, there were no foxes. This inconvenience was swiftly overcome by substituting the local jackals, and it was their small but fierce-looking heads that adorned each “honour board”. The hunt was executed with as much pomp and ceremony as any back home. It was discontinued in 1996 as jackals and the space to gallop were, by then, in short supply. Recently the Ooty Hunt has been revived by Indian military horsemen – now as a drag hunt but with just as much ceremony as before.

The Ooty club is a time capsule, a relic of Raj that refuses to roll over and die. The clipped voices of long dead military men continue to whisper in the ballroom and their laughter can be faintly heard in billiard room and bar.

But scratch the surface here in the Nilgiri and the past is everywhere. All those years ago the founder, John Sullivan (who got into trouble with his bosses fighting for the rights of local people), introduced “English vegetables” potatoes, cauliflower, beetroot, carrots and many others to the area. Along with English fruits, these are still grown and traded in profusion. Then there is the famous narrow-gauge railway, built by the British, which continues to run (like clockwork). Enormous dams built by British civil engineers ensure the water supply for the area year round. And my favourite: in 1906 a fish expert, Henry C Wilson, introduced trout into the streams around Ooty. The descendants of Wilson’s trout still dart and shimmer in the waters of the Nilgiri.

It turned out I hadn’t really needed to go to the club to find history and legacy. If I looked, it was all around.

Martin Hughes-Games is a presenter of the BBC 'Springwatch’ programme

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