Blue Mountains to Sydney is Mahabalipuram to Chennai – a sure visit place for anyone staying more than 2 days in Sydney. A places surrounded by hills! You take a train from Sydney and it will drop you in Katoomba in less than 2 hours! Hills, cableways and something they say as World’s steepest railway too!
We had this as the first in the plan, but winter was making us keep postponing the trip. As the winter is giving way to spring (ideally, but still the chilly wind is ), this is the best time to be in Blue Mountains.
It was a Saturday, we started by around 9:20. Parramatta, where we live, is on the way to Katoomba from Sydney Central. The CityRail offers a combined ticket which incorporates a return train ticket with a site seeing double-decker for one day. It costs around A$38.
We got a train by around 9:45, it runs every one hour. The trains were more crowded, a clear reflection of the climate change! Crowded, I mean, relatively crowded. We were just finding it tough to get a side seat. Sometime people just spread around their hats, bags etc around them filling all 4 seats for a single person! You really have to stand and give them a stare for the bags to be put in its place!
As the train was moving away from the city, the flats started disappearing. Once it past Penrith, the limit of the city trains, it was fully moving in through woods. Slowly we were surrounded by mountains, and far above the sea level!
The train dropped us in Katoomba by around 11:20. A livelier town or I will call a village as the shops and crowds ended once you walk a 100 metre away from the station. We came out of the station, walked to the office across the street to change the link ticket from CityRail, to get a bus pass along with a map book depicting a lot of walking trails and the route for this hop on-off bus. This hop on off concept is same popular one in Europe! You take a day’s ticket and you can use the bus, which keep on going around in a specific route, thus turning up at the same spot every 1 hour or half an hour. So you can get down anywhere, spend sometime there, and pick the same bus to the next stop!
It was a double-decker running for the London Transport. The label was still on it. Again, inside the bus, the stickers normally seen in the London buses were still there! We got the driver seat in the first floor (I mean, the front seat on the top of the decker, which is a normal seat. That used to be my favourite in my childhood days). We decided to go for a full route first and then decide on which all to be prioritised for getting down and spending time. The bus went on with us, passing some stunning views of mountains, view points, the Scenic World (which has this cableway, and winch across the mountains), golf courses, houses with gardens, and then it was village nearby called Leura. This one looked like a typical English village – a long street full of small shops, selling paintings, flowers, a bar, butchery, a bakery, a pizza shop and so on.
During the next round, we got down at Scenic World, took a combined ticket for all the three trips. Started with the scenic rail which, they say, is the steepest in the World! It was taking us down through a slit between two huge rocks almost vertically! The ride will be for some 30 seconds, but it was amazing. We were actually sitting horizontally and the train was moving not as fast as a ride, it looked wonderful why we were not getting pushed out of the seat! I forgot the tickets leaving it in my seat. We had started walking through the rainforest which they call as scenic walk. Suddenly I realised it and came back. The train has gone up to pick the next set of people. I was amazed to see the tickets lying in the same spot, when the train came back!
We completed the walk, through the forest. We have to walk half a km and then, we will be picked up by a cable car of a capacity about 15 people taking us to the top. The last stretch was another cable car to take us to a point from one hill to another and bring back. It was again having a capacity of 10 plus, but was empty when we went in. That was amazing one. They had made the flooring also with transparent glass which made a flying feeling! A water fall, down below, gave us the feel of the depth. I would say that was the best of all!
I think it is enough for a week. I will continue with it next week.
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