tea, tea and more tea in munnar. but no elephants, despite the daily warnings

a big parvarti. note the severed head in one of her right hands
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After our travel woes in Chennai and Madurai, we decided to splash out some of our Christmas money on a driver and car to take us up from Tamil Nadu into the Western Ghats town of Munnar.

We had a really nice driver over sat in the back of our olde worlde style Hindustan Ambassador (based on a Morris Oxford they say).  Our driver lived up to his promise and stopped at lots of attractions on the way so that we could take photos, eat, and spend some money.

Most interesting stop was at a spice garden where we learnt all about growing pepper, coriander, cardamom and the like.

our car and driver for the day. he had a very wobbly head.
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In Munnar we stayed in a homestay up in the tea plantations called Zina's.  It is run by a spritely 80 year old call Joseph, who likes everyone to drink lots of tea.  Even my caffeine allergy excuse didn't stop him putting cups of the stuff in front of me.  But being a good girl Alex took her share and mine.  She claims that her lifetime tea consumption has gone up from 1 cup to 10 in our stay here.  Carolyne would have been shocked.

Every morning Joseph gets all his guests crammed into the living room with a cup of tea in hand before starting his description of the different walks and tours that you can go on from his house.  Very lengthy descriptions they are too.  Then, he asks which one you want to do.  THEN, he repeats the description, with more detail, a draws a map for you.  All very nice, until he says that you have to repeat the description of the tour back to you to make sure you've understood.  We got quite good at this by day 3.

spice guide with a big smile
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Originally we only planned to stay for 2 nights, but ended up spending 4 nights dodging the elephants in the garden.   We did 2 really scenic walks, one recommended by Joseph that follows the road down through the tea and into the valley, and the second up and onto a ridge looking out over the whole region.  The views from the ridge were amazing, and Joseph might add this to his list of tours.

By the way, there were no elephants in the garden, but every morning, end every night, we were told that elephants had been in the garden the night before eating sugar cane.  And that last year they killed 2 Canadian tourists, I'm not sure if this was all part of a plan to make us pay got tuk-tuks back up the path to the house at night, but we feel lucky to have got away safely...