Munnar Sightseeing
Wednesday 1/9
When we took to the roads today I was thinking that due to the strike we would get around as easily as we did on the way in to Munnar. Wrong. Because everyone and their brother was now on holiday, as our driver put it, all the inexperienced drivers were on the road.
He said the traffic was much greater than it normally is on the weekend because even folks that would normally work the weekend are not working. The inexperienced drivers would often stop in the middle of the road to sightsee or not pull far enough over on these tiny roads. We did get in our first fender bender when another driver was looky louing to the side but still driving straight ahead.
Munnar is tea country and we took to the hills around the town which lies in the confluence of three rivers today. In August the center of town was underwater with some of the worst flooding this area has ever seen. The tourism and other industries have suffered greatly. But the tea plants seem to have weathered this well. Tea plants decorate the hillsides here in an orderly fashion like the rice patties did in Vietnam.
Our first stop was a tea factory where we learned about the orthodox method of producing tea which is a more expensive and pure leaf way to process the plant without including the stem into the end product. It was a quiet tour of the factory with the machine workers on strike. We self sampled the variety of teas afterward because the tea somaliers were on strike and we would like to have had some french fries but apparently even french friers go on strike.
We headed out to a site called Echo Point which apparently is a pretty cool acoustic feature. This was closed closed as Echo and his Bunnymen were also on strike. Near Echo Point there is also a wild elephant crossing area and the forest service was on hand as an elephant had crossed and was down by the water. These elephants have been taking the same route for millenia and for your safety you don't want to get in their way. Our vantage point was a long way off for this one, I had to use the digital zoom to get a pic.
We wrapped our day up by getting an Ayurvedic massage. Never had one of these before and Riley says she will never get one again. Something about being pretty much naked and having hot oil rubbed into the skin that is not her cup of tea, I am kinda with her. She pronounces it Are-Ewwww!-Vedic.
We had another great dinner at our homestay and before we wrapped it up I secured a trek in the hills for the next day. The conversation on the phone was pretty funny. I had initiated with them earlier in the day and they were now calling me back. I answered the phone and said "Hello". The voice on the other end said "Hello". Again, I said "Hello". The other voice "Hello. Once more, I said "Hello". Once again came the echo that we were looking for earlier in the day. Pretty funny. I finally gave in and said "This is John" then we starting getting down to business.
We have had challenges with our internet connections. They seem to scream at first then they barely work. It was only after some investigation that we discovered the mobile data hotspot devices, which are a common way that homestays provide internet, are limited to a few gigs per day at 4G download speed until they drop to early 90s dial up speed. That makes sense. Then we had to figure out where that data was going. Turns our Riley was burning it up first thing in the morning with slime, ASMR, and cat videos.
Images in 2019 Munnar
Images: You might have to access the images in a different way depending on the size of your screen. For full size monitors the links should appear on the left, for phones and tablets you will need to select the menu drop-down icon on the upper left corner.
When we took to the roads today I was thinking that due to the strike we would get around as easily as we did on the way in to Munnar. Wrong. Because everyone and their brother was now on holiday, as our driver put it, all the inexperienced drivers were on the road.
He said the traffic was much greater than it normally is on the weekend because even folks that would normally work the weekend are not working. The inexperienced drivers would often stop in the middle of the road to sightsee or not pull far enough over on these tiny roads. We did get in our first fender bender when another driver was looky louing to the side but still driving straight ahead.
Munnar is tea country and we took to the hills around the town which lies in the confluence of three rivers today. In August the center of town was underwater with some of the worst flooding this area has ever seen. The tourism and other industries have suffered greatly. But the tea plants seem to have weathered this well. Tea plants decorate the hillsides here in an orderly fashion like the rice patties did in Vietnam.
Our first stop was a tea factory where we learned about the orthodox method of producing tea which is a more expensive and pure leaf way to process the plant without including the stem into the end product. It was a quiet tour of the factory with the machine workers on strike. We self sampled the variety of teas afterward because the tea somaliers were on strike and we would like to have had some french fries but apparently even french friers go on strike.
We headed out to a site called Echo Point which apparently is a pretty cool acoustic feature. This was closed closed as Echo and his Bunnymen were also on strike. Near Echo Point there is also a wild elephant crossing area and the forest service was on hand as an elephant had crossed and was down by the water. These elephants have been taking the same route for millenia and for your safety you don't want to get in their way. Our vantage point was a long way off for this one, I had to use the digital zoom to get a pic.
We wrapped our day up by getting an Ayurvedic massage. Never had one of these before and Riley says she will never get one again. Something about being pretty much naked and having hot oil rubbed into the skin that is not her cup of tea, I am kinda with her. She pronounces it Are-Ewwww!-Vedic.
We had another great dinner at our homestay and before we wrapped it up I secured a trek in the hills for the next day. The conversation on the phone was pretty funny. I had initiated with them earlier in the day and they were now calling me back. I answered the phone and said "Hello". The voice on the other end said "Hello". Again, I said "Hello". The other voice "Hello. Once more, I said "Hello". Once again came the echo that we were looking for earlier in the day. Pretty funny. I finally gave in and said "This is John" then we starting getting down to business.
We have had challenges with our internet connections. They seem to scream at first then they barely work. It was only after some investigation that we discovered the mobile data hotspot devices, which are a common way that homestays provide internet, are limited to a few gigs per day at 4G download speed until they drop to early 90s dial up speed. That makes sense. Then we had to figure out where that data was going. Turns our Riley was burning it up first thing in the morning with slime, ASMR, and cat videos.
Images in 2019 Munnar
Images: You might have to access the images in a different way depending on the size of your screen. For full size monitors the links should appear on the left, for phones and tablets you will need to select the menu drop-down icon on the upper left corner.
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