Munnar tea plantation
Trip Start
Dec 17, 2011
1
9
19
Trip End
Feb 25, 2012
Munnar, Kerala, India
Sunday, January 8, 2012
On arrival, we were a little bit dismayed to find our driver seemed to think we would be heading back the following morning and began demanding more money to stay until the evening, saying that he wouldn't have agreed to stay all day as he had another job to do, which struck us as odd since he had been trying to persuade us on the way up to stay until Monday. After about 20 minutes arguing, everyone was a bit frustrated, fortunately Bernie managed to stay incredibly cool and called our travel agent who smoothed things over. Taxi man was not impressed and went off to sulk.
With this sorted, we arranged our activities for the weekend, starting with hiring a rickshaw to take us to some of the local sights. The conversation went a bit like this:
Rickshaw man: I take you museum, honey bees, view point, lake then top station (highest tea plantation)
Us: we want to be at top station at sunset. What time should we set off for the trip for that to work?
R.M.: sunset at 5.30 you get back at 6
Us: so what time should we leave to be there at 5.30
R.M.: ok leave at 5.30.
Us: no no we want to ARRIVE at 5.30
R.M. no arrive back here at 6
Us: No. for sunset at topstation, what time do we start here?
R.M: oh start here now ok
Us: and that will get us there at 5.30?
R.M. No back at 4
Us: how long from here to top station
R.M.: no first museum view point, lake, THEN top station.
Us: o.k. see you at 3.
After refueling on some cake (brownie, muffin and a carrot cake) from the bakery across from our guesthouse we headed off with RM to the tea museum. Not sure if it was all the chai in the air, but we seemed to be in a permanent state of hysterical giggles throughout the visit, so apologies for our photos. They were funny at the time....We didn't end up visiting top station as we had booked a trek the next day which took us up higher so instead played hide and seek in the tea plantations, before watching a a stunning sunset behind the mountain. R.M. drove us back to town, via a communist rally which was setting up for the weekend. A little surreal
Once wrapped up (the temperature dropped quite quickly after sunset) we asked Jinu (taxi man) to take us to a restaurant in town called SNN annex which had very good guidebook reviews. We were a bit confused when he pulled up outside a completely different restaurant, and even more so when we asked him to please take us to where we asked to go (-"but this place vegetarian also and also very good?"-"yes thank you but it looks like a garage"). He then took us to yet another restaurant called SNN restaurant, before we eventually managed to persuade him to take us to the correct place, which turned out to be packed full of locals and provided the best curry we've had since being in the north. Seems we got a bit more than we bargained for with Jinu, who kept hinting that we should pay for him to stay somewhere before sloping off to his friend's house for the night.
The following morning we got up at 6 to set off on our trek which took us up 500m though the tea plantations which at that time in the morning were incredibly beautiful. They cover the whole mountain like a carpet with little canals running though them for the tea pickers to move through. At 7am they were still coated in dew, and I know dad would have been going crazy for the tree and grass safari shots. You couldn't even begin to count the shades of green. The final part of the climb was steep so we really felt like we'd earned the spectacular views on the rocky ridges above the level of the plantations. We had also earned a tasty breakfast of mini bananas, toast, jam eggs and black tea, yum! The remainder of the say took us down the other side of the mountain through the spice plantations (we saw cardamom, pepper, cloves, ginger, pineapples, which incidentally grow in the ground!?). I'm NOT a fan of downhill walking (I get wobbly knees), and the temperature shot up in the afternoon so was pretty relieved when we arrived for lunch at 3. We'd managed to communicate to Jinu that we wanted him to pick us up from this end point, and were pretty startled when he was actually there waiting.
Back at the guesthouse now, we all have got a bit of a Sunday feeling (school tomorrow). Planning on changing to the general medical ward this week, will let you know how that works out soon!
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