11 Nov 2013 Munnar, Kerala, India

We woke at about 6:15 this morning just in time to see a magnificent sunrise over the mountains. The sunlight mixed with the early morning mist was beautiful.  We laid in bed with the curtain open watching the new day come to life. A nice very gentle way to start the day.

After breakfast we headed out to Munnar to pick-up our local guide, Sebin, a very personable young guy from the local area. We headed out to the Eravikulam National Park, home to the endangered Nilgiri Thars (the local mountain goat), there are only about 790 of these creatures left in the wild, that is less than the number of tigers!! The park covers a huge area, (including the highest mountain in southern India, Ana Mudi @ 2695m), of which only the fringe of a very small part of it is open to the public. There were lots of tourists there, mainly nationals with the odd internationals as well (did I just call us odd?  lol). They run shuttle buses up into the park from a staging location down the mountain a bit. The queue when we got there was very long, about an hours wait apparently, (in busy times it can be many hours) but because we are special, or is that odd?, and that we pay about 5x what the locals do, we got to queue jump and were on the first available bus up the mountain. We got dropped off at the park entrance and walked over to the path heading up the mountain.

It was really nice to walk up the 1.5km path to about the 2000m mark and see the goats feeding and basking on the mountainsides. The park is also home to wild elephants (didn’t see any), panthers (Didn’t see any) and slothe (nope, none of these either). 🙂

The mountainsides are also home to a plant, neelakurinji, that has a habit of having a mass flowering every 12 years, that results in the mountainsides turning blue (a purplish blue by the photos on display), the next occurance is in July 2018, and it lasts for about 3 months and draws thousands of tourists.

After taking way too many photos of goats we headed off back down the mountain to our driver and car. As we drove along we came to an area where there were women in the tea plantation picking the tea. We stopped and watched for a while and Sebin explained how they pick the tea (hand picked or shears) and how much they pick in a day and what they get paid. It was very interesting, Deb took great notes on all the details and I am sure she will fill in the details here. 🙂   (the tea pickers have to pick a minimum of 60kg of leaves by hand a day for this they earn 250rp (or $5AUD) they are paid extra if they pick more, they are also given accomodation and all of their needs including schooling for the children and health care.  All they have to provide are food & clothes, they work 51/2 days a week, 8hr days.  The women pick the tea and the men work in the factory drying the tea.)

Then we drove to the Madupetty Dam, a dam built in the 1940’s used for hydroelectric power and speedboating. A bit further around the lake was Echo and Shooting Point. When it first opened this point had an almost perfect echo, but now they have cutdown trees on the opposite bank and built shops on the near bank, the echo is hardly noticable. In the day of the British rule here, the Brits also used to come down here to shoot the local wildlife, tigers, deer, elephants, etc. We didn’t get out, the place was crowded with local tourists being very loud. During the drive from the dam to the point, our guide kept a lookout for wild elephants, he had seen some in the woods and grasslands on the edge of the lake about a week ago, but we saw none today.

To finish our sightseeing we went into the township of Munnar and just walked around the markets. Our guide said it was a quiet day in town today, the busy days are Sunday and Thursday. We walked through the fruit and vegetable markets (there was also a very smelly, fly attracting fish stall in them), the general bizaar, where you could purchase just about anything you might need from day to day, and finally a small spice market. We love walking through and observing the goings on in the local markets of the countries we visit, and India has been no exception. They are always full of life and vibrance, the essence of the people.

Tomorrow we head out of here and go to Kumarakom to relax at the Lake Resort for a day before we jump on a houseboat to explore the Kerala backwaters.

PS

We are pleased to hear Ella and Ethan played well at the Novar end of year recital.  We are looking forward to hearing them play when we get home.  Thanks for recording it Kieran 🙂  Here is hoping the caterer turns up next week at St Peters!  Well done Carly and all of your teachers and students at Novar Music Learning Centre  🙂