Munnar - Sliding Scales of Scenic Beauty.

 As was expected, I was pretty irritable on Feb 4th morning having to wake up about 4 hours earlier than my usual GoodMorning time.

(It was soon washed away in the special cold water bath I took before leaving though.)

 The early morning drive was very refreshing and I couldn't stop yelping at my parents all my driving capabilities and they literally had to shush me at some point, at which, I diverted my energies into gazing out and simply observing. (Pros call it vaynottam. But nevermind.)

We stopped for breakfast at hotel Aaramam, a KTDC facility for travellers, by Adoor.

Rejuvenated by my morning Dosha, I tuned into my online lectures, even while travelling, mostly because I was with my parents and they still think of me as a student. It was one hell of stressful class day, what with all the perfectly maintained potholes in the road and my earphones playing with my composure.

I continued the exercise of combining observing the road side and the class all through my route to Munnar.

There weren't any more stops in our journey, barring a short stop to get a Mirinda to fight off the Gas (our heirloom disease).

 My parents were taken in with the smoothness and structure of the Pala Bypass and Achan drove with a rejuvenated vigour beating off any tiredness through that stretch.

By and by, we reached Munnar. The transition from City to the Mountain terrain was hard to miss, given the umpteen hairpin and other curves, monkeys by the roadside and the never ending display of "Homemade chocolates".

About two to three hours of continuous curves, we finally reached Munnar town, from where we headed to Tea County, a hotel run by KTDC.

What strikes and stays about Munnar is its seemingly infinite carpet of tea plantations of equally seamless beauty and magic. It seems as though a Green carpet of great width was laid out in anticipation of something gliding down the mountain paths. (This is what such beauty does to you; seemingly stupid allegories, but beautiful nevertheless.)

 On reaching Tea county, we rushed through lunch to squeeze in some sightseeing and not waste time. I will not repeat the rush and rob you of a thirst trap for the absolute delicious Fish curry. The one dish that makes me feel bad for not liking cooking is That kind of fish curry. The perfect fish with few bones and interruptions, red gravy, and its graceful union with moru kachiath! Ah! Aah!.

Once done with lunch, we headed to Munnar town, to the KDHP Tea museum, where we came to (finally!) know the right way to make faulty malayalee tea, by not making the tea dust boil till its life itself is vapourised and instead just adding the tea dust, once the milk and sugar has blended and boiled. It was there that we saw the process of making tea leaves, and the four stages of cuts to finally reach the fine dust we know, and learned the difference between CTC and Orthodox tea (CTC is cutting the leaf till it is dust, and Orthodox method is squeezing the leaf till its juice and all useful stuff is extracted) and saw the documentary featuring the history of Kannan Devan Hills Produce. (And it left me wondering about the Imperial impact on the Western Ghats and its subsequent shaping of peoples' attitudes towards the indegenoius people and the conditioned subservience of the indegenious to the "Cultured" populace)

Once done with the Tea museum, we headed to the Eravikulam National Park, which was closed because it was the mating season of the Tahr, but nevertheless we were granted access because of the facade of visiting KDHP's plantations and the presence of a KDHP official, Mr. Mohan Varghese.

The National Park visit was to spot some wandering Nilgiri Tahr, but perhaps because of the proximity to the skies, maybe God heard my teeth chatter at the thought of seeing a living on more than two legs and decided to be merciful.

(Typical Provider behaviour, but the Imperial background helped me adjust to that attitude😎.)

The sighs of letdown (for my part, relief) soon transformed into sighs of sheer adoration for the beauty of the hills. This was when my sister was accorded the post of the Group Nischal, mainly because the camera seemed glued to her.

(She took pretty decent pictures though!)

After some more sighs and Wowing, we started downhill and headed back to Tea County for a long rest after a long day.

The second day dawned, cold, wet, and Beautiful.

The Hills were Wet, with the overnight mist (or was it the tears from mourning the loss of its natural belongings, with the farce of development?)

I woke up at 6:30 to see the view and wasn't disappointed. But, realising the fickleness of beauty once its layers are undone, I decided to sleep for another hour.

Sleep done properly, I was up and about and ready by 8:30 for breakfast.

Post breakfast (for which I was introduced to Pidi and Curry, another discovery, like the Iced tea) my mother, sister and I headed to Shrishti, a unit under KDHP, setup for the total rehabilitation of Specially Abled people from the community of plantation workers. It was truly humbling, seeing their resilience and hustle and smile, even with stories punctuated frequently with tragedies like landslides, power outages and official condescence. Their efforts at creating art from natural resources really shone through and left a deep impression on me. The Paper making unit, Athulya has my special love for the excitement it created within me, seeing all those stationery, Beautiful designs and covers.

From Shrishti, we headed to the High Range Club, with some fresh Strawberries, notebooks, cookies and face masks.

Lunch was served at the High range club, again a colonial tombstone, with its silent and resigned architechture, subdued colours of white and brown and the sex based segregation of rooms. Women were assigned to a powder room, with exclusive access to the washrooms, whereas the Game room and Bar had an ominous "Men Only" sign on it.

Like trashing colonialism, we trashed that direction and entered the Bar nevertheless. It was decorated with pictures of hunters and managers of various estates, their games, head of wild boars, bison, leopard and umpteen Nilgiri Tahr. All animals had a glazed look in their eyes, like regarding us as freaks from some future, waiting to catch up with their lost lives.

Post lunch, we were driven by Sashi Uncle and another official of KDHP, Nithin uncle, to the Kundale Club, situated in an obscure part of their tea estate, supposedly for sighting Bison.

Enroute, we stopped at Echo point, where my father and his co travellers got adventurous and decided to toss aside decorum and ended up howling into the wild and had it bounce back at them from the wilderness. A stop at KSEB Hydel tourism project for a Speed boat adrenaline pump was also a highlight of the day. The driver of the boat very kindly pandered to our fears and swirled the boat here and there to raise the howls and BP levels. He also sweetly offered to take our pictures, and patiently put up with our amateur photography of the surrounding beauty. (Im telling you, mountains, greenery, and the water makes for an ethereal vision).

Post the speedboat adventure, we were driven to the Kundale club, but by then, it had grown dark, and the road was bumpy as is expected of a forest road. We passed several tractors and lorries going to and fro, with supplies or tea leaves and my father was struck with nostalgia about his Phd days, which he spent in Adimaly.

The drive also bared my eyes to the living conditions of the people working in the plantations, the damage from the landslides, or frequent power outages, cutting off entire villages, stranding them in times of disaster, like it happened in Pettimudi, seemed distant in paper, but hearing first hand accounts of these jolted me to the undeserving privileges of life and the subtlety of mortality.

Finally, reaching the Kundale club, we were in for a slight disappointment as it was already dark and the Bison had strict standards of punctuality.

All the disappointment was secondary to me as I was already freezed listening to the various stories about the Loner elephant, Padayappa, who was quite moody. 

The Kundale club was again an exposure to the aura of surrealism surrounding Munnar. The night was dark, the sky was punctuated with smatterings of stars, the mist wet my foot as I stepped on the grass, wrapping my hand around myself to keep warm. Oxymoronic, now that I think of it.

The omnipresence of colonialism only increased the surrealism. The heads of unwitting Wild boars and Leopards seemed to look uncomprehendingly at the explanations and speeches given to us by the managers of the estate.

After spending some more time, Nithin uncle reminded everybody of the journey downhill, and through the forest.

This jolted everyone to their senses and we bid adieu to the tombstones of imperialism, and the deep quiet that shrouded the darkness and the cold.

The journey back was as jolty, as we explored each crack in the roof of the jeep at every inch of the road.

Finally making it back to Tea County at 9:30, I was thoroughly done for the day and had dinner and a satisfying sleep.

The next day started late, everyone was tired after a full day of tripping and there was the drive back home.

Nevertheless, we made it to the Restaurant in time for breakfast and soon after, started from Tea County to Lockhart Gap, in Devikulam

The road seemed to be under construction, but that didn't deter my parents who were determined to make the most of Munnar.

The drive to the Gap was equally swingy, what with the curves every five minutes, but the drive was punctuated with eye candy tea estates and mist.

Enroute, we fulfilled my mother's wish and clicked some pictures inside a tea plantation and ran away before cows came at us for trespassing on their breakfast.

The Gap itself didn't feel remarkable, but the drive was Beautiful.

We started the journey back home, sometime around 12:30.

The journey had frequent stops for food ("veetile oonu" is refreshing, though it felt like intruding into the providers privacy. Tasty and filling, nevertheless), bathroom breaks (because unexpected stomach upsets are also family heirloom), and Sprite breaks. 

Finally, we closed in on Thiruvananthapuram, at about 11 (salute to my father's sense of punctuality. 11 o clock is 11 o clock,.nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.), after a quick detour at Pala for a planned run in at my friend, Chakkara muth Aleena Felix's place.

That night, sorting strawberries, seemed like the perfect finish to a sour sweet trip of revelation, introspection, scenic beauty, stomach upsets and memories.