The Shade, our new homestay for the next 5 nights, is not actually in the mountain town of Munnar itself. Instead it is about a 30 minute drive through the Western Ghats mountains to the south-west, near the towns of Anachal and Aadi. We had decided whilst in Kochi on some good recommendations to shorten our time in the Ghats to only 5 nights and stay the last 2 nights of the week from a bird sanctuary between Munnar and Kochi, which is where I am writing this blog post from. As such, I will cover all 4 days in Munnar in this post, then the last few days in Kerala in the next.

Monday –

We woke up Monday morning to our glorious view, and went upstairs to the dining room where Santhosh (our host) had already set out the table overlooking the garden and valley beyond. Breakfast was a mild pea curry with appam, toast with butter and jam, and watermelon. We were still, and would remain for the rest of our stay, the only people in the homestay which made it feel even more luxurious.

Sathosh had booked a rickshaw for us that morning to take us to a local hiking spot called the bison trail, which took us up the Chokramudi peak, the third highest in Kerala at 2200m. The journey there was about an hour and took us through the town of Munnar. As the rickshaw came round the mountain passes towards Munnar, suddenly the palm jungle gave way to a landscape of green tea fields stretching up and across the Munnar valley. The sight stayed with us for the remaining half an hour of the journey, and is some of the best scenery we’ve yet seen in India (Chokramudi itself is the last picture).

Our rickshaw set us down and waited at the bottom of the trail, which was deserted save from a little hut where some fairly official looking park ranger sold us a ticket and assigned a guide to take us up. We probably didn’t need a guide in the end as the path was quite clear, but in any case our guide walked ahead of us and didn’t speak any English except to say “careful” when he heard me slip on the path behind him.

The walk up to the top of the peak was at times across bare rock, and at times on dusty paths. As we climbed, the hazy tea-fields and mountain towns stretched further out beneath us. Beyond, the Western Ghats mountain range was visible to the horizon in every direction. We passed through a little glade on the shoulder of the mountain, then made the final climb up to the peak of Chokramudi.

The guide kept a hard pace, and we reached the top within an hour and a half. The views were stunning in all directions, and we rested for a while taking them in before making the fairly arduous descent down the rock face and skidding dusty tracks. By the time we got to the bottom, we were about ready for lunch.

Santhosh had given our driver instructions to take us to a tea factory before taking us to Munnar for lunch but had forgotten that, since the tea-pickers are off on Sundays, the factory is closed on a Monday. This turned out for the best in the long run as we could still go back later in the week, and we were both starving by the time we had come down off of Chokramudi.

Our rickshaw driver dropped us off at a local restaurant in Munnar on his recommendation, which was another of the cafeteria style places that the locals all seem to go to. Given we were having Keralan curry for breakfast and dinner, we opted for some noodles which were surprisingly good given how rarely they’re probably ordered.

To compensate us for the loss of the tea factory visit, our driver took home via to a rose garden just outside of Munnar. It was a bit like a giant garden centre, but I quite like garden centres and we were able to buy an ice-cream, so we enjoyed a wander round in an afternoon sun that was much more manageable than that of Varkala or Kochi.

Once home, we spent the afternoon out on the balcony overlooking the valley and, by the evening, it was even cool enough for a jumper. Dinner was served upstairs in the dining room by Santhosh. Santhosh was a man of about 50, tall for the men in Malayalam, and with a fine moustache. Though a man of very few (English) words, Santhosh was always making sure we had enough food, booking taxis and rickshaws for us, and generally making sure we were having a good time. He reminded Ellie and I of the husband of Big Ammachi in the book Covenant of Water for anyone who’s read it (Mum).

Tuesday –

We were up early on Tuesday morning to be dropped off at the foot of another mountain by a rickshaw driver for 7am. There, we met a group of tourists and a couple of hiking tour-guides that Santhosh had arranged for us to join for a longer hike through the local area. The rest of the group were almost all British and of around our age, if not a little younger, with the only exception being a few Dutch. We set off up into the mountains though this time on a tarmac road, before turning off onto a track. By 9am we were high up with a glorious view, and here we stopped for breakfast.

We had been given a newspaper wrapping each containing our breakfast at the beginning of the trek, which Ellie and I joked at least couldn’t be another curry. On opening the wrapping, however, it transpired that it was in fact another curry, just with the curries being poured into little plastic bags and tied up. It was quite tasty, though a little awkward to get the idly (rice cakes) into the curry whilst perched on a rock. We were given, however, as much fruit as we could eat and Ellie in particular (photo for proof) enjoyed the passion fruits.

We kept climbing up the side of the mountain, sometimes along the grassy mountain-side, then at other times through stands of trees, until we reached the ridge. It was about 10am by this point and we had been climbing for about 2 hours, so it was good to get some relative flat and glorious views. We walked along the ridge a little way, then came down the other side and into the tea plantations.

Our guide was a young local man of about 25, the other guide having been lost to a tourist that had refused to go any further about halfway up the mountain. He stopped every now and again to explain something about the tea-fields in very unorthodox English such that only the general idea of what he meant came across. Winding our way through the tea fields that line the mountain, we made our way to a mountain resort that had a little cafe serving a well deserved tea or coffee (I had both).

Once refreshed, we headed through a wooded area back onto the ridge of the mountains, and made one last push for the top peak. After taking photos and taking a bit of rest, we made our way slowly down through the plantations to the edge of Munnar. It was by now about 2pm, and the guide took our group via jeep to the same restaurant as we had been to for lunch on Monday. The tour was paying for the lunch which meant it was enevitably going to be a thali, as this is the cheapest thing on the menu, so we made our escape to another restaurant by rickshaw, then home for a rest.

That evening we had dinner as usual in the dining room, then went back to our room for a game of chess on our little portable chess board from Varkala. We had found out that evening that Ellie had a job offer for starting psychiatry training in Oxford, which is where we plan to move make to and, given the absence of any alcohol, chess was our only option for celebration. Ellie won, making it the first game we’ve played so far on the trip that hasn’t ended in a draw.

Wednesday –

Wednesday was a quiet day, pretty much on the insistence of Santhosh, so there isn’t much to write about. We spent most of the time reading, sitting out over our view, and made a brief excursion out to a restaurant in Anachal for a lunch of chilli paneer with butter roti and vegetable noodles. Some excitement was offered by the removal of a upturned cockroach, but other than that it was a very relaxed day.

We had agreed, however, for Santhosh to take us around the tour of his garden. The garden rolled away down the steep slopes of the hill beneath our room, so it was difficult to get much of an idea of its size. Walking down through it, we realised that it was more of a plantation than a garden. It was a 15 minute walk to the bottom, and Santhosh grew mainly cardamom, but also pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cashews, passion-fruit and a variety of other fruit we hadn’t heard of before. On asking, Santhosh told us that he had been born in the same house as he lived now, and had lived there his whole life. Clearly, the garden was his passion and also more of his livelihood than the homestay was. After our stroll, we had a particularly delicious dinner of fried bread with a potato curry and omelette, then went back to the room and to bed.

Thursday –

We started Thursday morning in the usual way, and Santhosh had arranged for us a driver from 11am so we could go back to the tea factory to see it working. The tour took us around the factory, which looked for all the world like the bit you queue in when going on the Wild West roller-coaster at Disneyland. The tea was sorted by hand into white (the top leaves), green (the second leaves), and black (everything else). The black tea was then put through huge rollers to grind it, and dried out to allow it to oxidise. We were given a little taste of the different teas at the end, and had to resist the temptation to buy some to put into our already overloaded bags.

We stopped in Munnar for lunch, and found a cafe quite clearly built for Westerners doing toasted sandwiches and coffee (which still wasn’t that good, sadly). Ellie’s sandwich was of a sensible size, whilst somehow I managed to order 3 club sandwiches totally 9 slices of bread that made me feel uncomfortably full the rest of the day. From Munnar, we had planned to go to the English-built “CSI” church on the outskirts of the town which looked as if it should be in the Scottish lowlands, but Santhosh had told the driver to go from Munnar to Anakulam and we weren’t able to get him to understand our request for a detour.

So, we settled down for the 2 hour journey to Anakulam. We had it on recommendation from friends from yoga school that wild elephants sometimes come down to the water there around dusk, so we thought we would try our luck. It was a long journey in a rickshaw across sometimes dreadful roads. It was fascinating, however, to drive through the tea-plantations and past the villages of tea-pickers working for the Lackshmi tea estate owned by Tata.

We eventually arrived at Anakulam, which was a tiny village mainly consisting of little cafes to serve tourists looking to see the elephants. We took a quiet spot where you could pay 20/- (20p) to drink a cold drink on a bench with a prime view over the elephant bathing pool. Beyond it was the edge of the jungle proper. We sat for an hour reading until I looked up and saw the head of an elephant emerging from the jungle path. It looked like an apparition at first, but sure enough two fully sized elephants and two baby elephants came down the hill and bathed in the pool.

Before long, the little family was joined by a male, two more females and another few older juveniles. They greeted each other by touching trunks and nuzzling heads, and generally took no notice of us watching only a few tens of metres away. At one point, a juvenile male came tentatively down to join, but was chased away by the females. He tried once more, and was met on the bank by one of the adult females who bathed him in dust, let him have a drink from the water’s edge then chased him off again. The drama was enthralling to see.

We reluctantly pulled ourselves away after a couple of hours, and headed back to our rickshaw driver who also had a prime spot for watching the elephants. We headed off into the evening back up into the mountains. Unexpectedly, our driver stopped and bought us each a cup of chai and some cakes at a road-side chai stall which backed onto the vendor’s house. The vendor, his wife, and what we took to be his erratic adult son spoke no English but smiled at us every time we said anything, and the driver insisted on paying.

After this pleasant interlude, we made our way in the dark back to The Shade where Santhosh was waiting with dinner. I was still laden with my 3 club sandwiches, but managed as much as I could of our last meal before heading back down to our room for a rest before bed.

And so ended our whistle-stop tour of the Western Ghats which, without a doubt, was the most stunning scenery and some of the friendliest people we have met on a trip full of stunning scenery and friendly people. Next, to Thattekad Bird Sanctuary!

Until then,

Rob xx