Munnar

The hill station town of Munnar

Superbly kept gardens

I didn’t really know what to do the following day, I had done the sight-seeing trail the previous day and had been slightly disillusioned with it. I had had a bad night’s sleep on an uncomfortable bed so didn’t appreciate the phone call from reception at 9 o’clock asking “Would Madam like breakfast? Closing at 9.30” The hotel had told me breakfast was served until 10.30am. and I had intended getting my daily fruit at around 10.25am. I shouldn’t have bothered my backside getting out of bed as the breakfast looked inedible and the only fruit they had was those wretched bananas.

Lovely gardens opposite the open air urinal

The day was spent ambling around town, not a lot to see apart from the beautiful gardens of the KDHP. (Kanan Devan Hills Plantations) Unfortunately, the spot across the river from these fabulous gardens was a tuk tuk hangout and therefore treated like a public toilet and the place stank of piss so I didn’t hang around. 

The hotel's garden

The afternoon was spent sitting in the sun, reading a book in the hotel’s fairly well kept gardens beneath the tea trees, half stoned on tramadol. I thought I would spend my final day in Munnar going to the tea factory, which I had passed on the first day and also the tea museum, just 1km from the hotel. After all I was in tea country so should feign some kind of interest in the beverage I hardly ever drink. My walk into town coincided with the morning school run, which takes on a slightly different image to back home. No Yummy Mummy’s and their pathetic SUVs or parents cycling with their kids on the front or back of their bicycle, just tuk tuks rammed to the rafters with kids, I counted ten in one of them.

On the road to the tea factory

Those tuk tuk drivers not on school duty were lurking in town with the taxi drivers asking if “Madam would like to go sight-seeing”. I tend to ignore anyone who annoys me and choose a driver who looks clean and unlikely to ask me too many questions as I am getting a little bit tired of the irritating “Where you from?” malarkey. After the standard bartering, Mano the tuk tuk driver with ridiculously white teeth carts me off to the tea factory which was closed for a month....... Ever so sulkily, I blamed Mano, took a photo as the factory is set in lovely surroundings and then thought sod it, I’ll get him to take me to the Top Station which is about 40km (or 60km according to a tuk tuk driver) from Munnar and a lot of the buses don’t go up there. This turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made in my wide experience of travelling.

The silver oak trees amongst the tea just outside the closed tea factory

It was still relatively early in the morning and the roads were quiet and the breeze had not kicked in yet. When we got to Matupetty Dam, there were very few tourists around and the hawkers had not set up their stalls yet. The reservoir (the locals call it a man-made lake, which in my reckoning, is a reservoir) was calm and stunningly beautiful with the mountains in the background. The drive up until Kundala Dam, which I had already experienced once already was far more enjoyable this time around..

Kundala "Lake"

My chariot and a cuppa tea

Further on up the road, the scenery got even better and the roads were now practically empty. We stopped at a tiny village called Yellapatty for a cuppa and a snack resembling a small donut but made from rice flour, I think. The chai was made in a painstakingly but no doubt traditional way which involved a series of pouring procedures from one receptacle to another. I couldn’t keep up as to what was moving from one place to another or why but it resulted in a fine cup of sweetened, milky masala tea which was delicious, even to me.

Growing vegetables as well as tea

During our tea break, I had a look around and could see that there was a fairly expensive market garden operation going on in the flat areas of Yellapatty. Potatoes, carrots, cabbages, peas, beans and strawberries are all grown up here. Cocoa plants are prevalent too and lots of the shops in town sell homemade chocolate.

I really like this place

Mano paid for the tea and snack (I was obviously over-paying for the trip) and we were off again.The next few bends brought the most picturesque plantations of them all and we stopped a while watching the women going about plucking the tea-leaves. Only women do the plucking, it is believed that they have more dextrous fingers so while they do the back-breaking work, the men seem to just stand around in the middle of the road drinking tea.

Tea was first planted in the region, by the English in 1880, during the years of The Raj. The story of the last 130 years of tea making ion Munnar is actually heart-warming instead of oppressive. Not only were the workers well cared for but the Muthuvan tribe, the mountain, nomad people were respected and have never been driven from the make-shift homes. These tribes were paramount to the success of the plantations, using their expert knowledge of the land.

Women plucking

The workers had access to the best healthcare probably anywhere in India, at a time when cholera and malaria were rife in the hills.  Education facilities were built for their children and still today, the first rate schooling continues, with many of the schools having gained excellent credentials. Nothing much has changed about the workers’ colourful, little, single storey cottages over the years, with their corrugated roofs weighed down with small rocks.

The entire region is so green and beautiful

Top Station as at an altitude of around 1,750 metres, depending on which Google entry you read. The road ends here and there’s a bit of a walk to get you out to a sort of peninsula in the midst of the Ikkuri District with views of South India’s highest peak at 2,700m, Anamudi. Entrance into this heavenly place is 15 Rupees and the views are priceless.

There’s a bit of a hike down hundreds of makeshift steps out to the viewpoint and my dodgy knees told me it would be easier getting back up the steps than going down them. My lungs were to argue with my knees a bit later on.......

The mountains surrounded me and me only, I was alone in one of the most fabulous settings I have ever been in. I am lucky enough to have witnessed some of the most spectacular scenery in the world like The Swiss Alps, The Grand Canyon, Table Mountain, The Hai Van Pass in Vietnam, The west coast of Ireland at last but not least The Yorkshire Dales and this place has now joined this distinguished list.

I was able to hear a steam running somewhere in the distance, birds singing, bees buzzing, cockerels cock-a-doodle-dooing and the very distant and occasional chug chug chug of some vehicle or other. At one stage, I heard a big crash sounding like a truck going over the side but this was just my super sensitive ears and imagination running wild.

The Top Station is advertised as a somewhere to float in the clouds. There were no clouds when I was there, just a hazy mist in the far distance but I could imagine what it would be like on such a day popping out above cloud level and seeming to be on top of the world. I also couldn’t help wondering how wonderful it would be to watch the sun rise here, or to sit around a camp fire as the sun sets. There are a couple of homestays at the top so maybe I can do these things, next time.

I’ve never been a tourist who goes to a beautiful place, takes some photos and leaves. I like to sit down in the peace and quiet, take it all in and ponder. I was so fortunate to have the place to myself for almost an hour so I made the most of it sat on a big rock in the fierce sun, but cool wind and as soon as some other people arrived, I was off. On the hike back up, I took in the colourful, wild flowers and what I think were spathodea and jacaranda trees in the midst of this truly awe inspiring landscape.

I don’t think I wiped the grin off my face all the way back to Munnar. The touristy spots had turned into hell again and I realised that all these people had driven from Cochin so didn’t reach Munnar until the afternoon. Amazing how many people come all that distance on a day trip. Their loss was my gain.

This shop sells everything

I had one of those panic moments when I was back in the hotel. I had shot a lot of footage on my camera and the 1 GB memory card was full but I have my laptop so just transferred all my images and videos but as I was doing so, my camera died, the very long battery life had at last come to an end. It’s a new camera and I brought the USB cable with me thinking that I could charge the battery through the laptop but alas, not. My camera was rendered useless. I didn’t hang out a lot of hope on being able to find a charger in such a small town and had visions of having to order one from Cochin and getting it driven to me. Not to be defeated, I rushed into town and found a tiny electronics shop and told them my problem. The man just reached behind him, took a small box off the shelf, took some contraption out, inserted my battery and a light came on but me the eternal pessimist didn’t get excited. The he plugged it in and the charger started doing a disco dance. After a couple of minutes, still cynical, I inserted the battery back into my camera and to my delight, it had a slight charge so I took a quick picture of the shop and skipped home, again with a smile on my face.

The tea museum was open for just one more hour so I strode up the hill towards it as schoolchildren from the adjacent school walked down. They all said hello to me and some asked me for a pen but I only had one spare one with me so some lucky kid is now in possession of a “Holiday Inn” pen, I hope she enjoys it. One boy was a bit cheeky and even though my command of the Malayalam language has stalled, he was obviously making some comment about my breasts!

The playing fields which the school kids share with cows

The tea museum was fairly interesting. Making tea is very simple: Pluck leaves, put on a conveyor belt, cut, oxidise, dry, filtrate and pack. They have a complete plant in the museum, just for tourist purposes and a pocketed some of the end product. We were given a complimentary cup while waiting for a documentary to begin and I have now become a convert, to cardamom tea, probably the best cup of tea I’ll ever had and get this, it was made with powdered milk!

I will never forget my cardamon tea

The film we were shown was informative and I won’t bore you with the history of tea-making in Munnar but I was impressed to hear that the current workers and ex-employees actually own the vast majority of KDHP. Tata, who seem to own/rule India, have a stake too but prior to 2005, they owned the whole lot. The English hierarchy sold up after independence in 1947.

I left the tea museum, with my packet of cardamom tea and sauntered back to the hotel in the cooling air as the sun was disappearing behind the plantations of the Nallathanni Estate. A huge tasty dinner at Rapsy Restro ended a perfect day.