Jaipur to Ooty travel predicament

Hello all, I’m on my second trip to India later this year (woop!) and am having a quandary about transport. Basically we need to leave Jaipur on Tuesday 27th November and get to Mettupalayam on Thursday 29th November in time for the toy train that leaves at 7.10am.

The current idea I have in mind is to fly to Bangalore (one direct flight) from Jaipur, overnight and maybe see the city for a few hours that evening and next day (bonus as never been there before) then get a night train from Bangalre to Coimbatore (16526 leaving SBC 21.40 and arriving 05.25) then motoring via a taxi up to Mettupalayam, apparently taking 45mins according to google maps. This would be cutting it quite fine and if the train was half an hour late our plans probably wouldn’t work (however train does start in SBC).

Otherwise, we could fly fro Jaipur to Coimbatore via Mumbai but is quite a time consuming flight at 8 hours in total. We would stay in Mettupalayam if we did things this way.

Has anyone got any other ideas on how to solve this travel predicament? My other half is very insistent that we travel on the toy train so it cannot be cut out of our itinerary.

can you try jaipur to chennai by air (indigo has a via ahmedabad option so you dont get off)? then you can get MAS-MTP by overnight train, which connects to MTP-UAM toy train in the morning...

Thank you for the suggestion... I'll check it out :-)

Yay! Your suggestion is brilliant. You have no idea bhow long I've been scratching my head over this one! One more question, there are 2 flights available

Indigo JAI 10:20 → MAA 14:10 3h 50m 1 stop (AMD)
SpiceJet JAI 15:15 → MAA 19:15 4h 00m 1 stop (HYD)

Would you suggest the earlier or later one (1 hrs 45 enough time to get through Chennai airport and to the train station with Spicejet?) or play it safe, go for the earlier flight and do some more signtseeing in JAI for the day instead of a few hours seeing Chennai (never been there before either).

both are equally good options. indigo has a better track record of on-time (even before-time) take-off & landings.
assuming all you need to do in chennai is go from airport to station, spicejet might still test your nerves (as 12671 leaves at 2100) in terms of transit from airpot to train station...

Cool. Will take your advice. I preferably don't want my nerves tested too much - it is a honeymoon after all!

Don't take the later flight. Chennai Central station is approx 45 minutes away from the airport, and by the time you land, get your bags out, get out of the airport and leave for the station, you'll certainly be very nervous! It will be far less nerve-wracking to enjoy the cool climes of Chennai for an afternoon.

if you manage to come out of MAA quickly & weather is nice, you may opt to visit the Chennai Fort area (I think the ASI museum is open till 5PM) & then have a dinner at some place before the car drops you off at the station. you might want to arrange an a/c cab from the airport on a half-day use package to make it convenient.

if luggage is not too much, you can walk over to trisulam (you'll be surprised how close it is to the airport), take a local train to chennai park (takes about 30 mins) & walk over to chennai central.
there is a train around 8:00PM from trisulam that might be optimal.