Munnar, Kerala

Kerala is a lush coastal state known for its palm trees, beaches and tropical climate. Less known is the Kerala of hills and mountain ranges with beautiful scenery and a much more temperate climate. This is where we began our visit to Kerala in the' hill-station' of Munnar. Munnar, a summer resort for the British during colonial times, is located at about 5500 ft. Life in Munnar primarily revolves around tea - the first tea plantation being started here by the Brits around 1895. The hills are covered in tea plantations and are truly an amazing sight to see. Today there are over 29,000 acres of tea. These are not fairly level fields but rather steep hill side. The thousands, probably millions, of hours of labour to make it what it is is mind boggling. Just the time it takes to maintain and harvest the crop is astounding. Each tea plant is said to be on average 80-100 years old. They are trimmed and cut constantly. Tea picking, said to be an art in itself, has to happen on all those acres every 2 weeks. Women do all the picking, laboring for a day for the sum of Rs. 80 (CND$ 2, US$ 1.60). During that day they are expected to pick about 35 kg (77 lbs). Somehow they know just which leaves are ready for picking and leave all the rest. The leaves are then all loaded on to a trailer and hauled off by a tractor to a tea factory to be processed. We unfortunately were not able to see how that process worked. The climate was a great change after the heat of Goa, having cooled off to around 27C (80F). In addition, on both afternoons here, there have been big thunder storms accompanying by torrential rains. We are told this is a little unusual for this time of year, but during monsoons that rain would be everyday for 3 months. It had cooled off enough that last night sitting out on the patio eating kabobs (yes it was great!), all four of us had a jacket on. I still had to leave on my shorts though. If we could only store some of this coolness. We met a lady during the afternoon who was visiting here from Delhi. She said it was 45C (113F) back home. Ouch!!

Mr Sashi loading us up the first time for the drive to Munnar

Another Kerala river

Our first glimpse of the Munnar tea plantations. Acres and acres of tea. The trees are supposed to supply shade in some strategic fashion to certain tea plants which alters the flavor of the tea.

And more tea...

A waterfall along our journey. The hotel we stayed at filled their water trucks here and trucked it up the mountain to the resort every day.

And more tea..

And still more tea! The labour involved to plant all this tea much less maintain and harvest the tea every couple weeks just boggles the mind!