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| Windermere Lodge Gounds |
Our 3 day adventure started off with Julie and I and one of the Life Long Learners from the ship. We boarded a flight to Cochin and then took a car with a driver about 150K to the area around Munnar. Munnar means 3 rivers in the Tamil language and is a small village about 4,000 feet above sea level. We stayed about 5K from the village in a resort called Windermere at an elevation of about 5,000 ft. The resort was beautiful as was the country side. It rained most of the 4 hours it took us to drive from Cochin to Munnar and the mountains were shrouded with fog and the visibility was clouded by the heavy rain. Toward the end of the day, we were finally able to see the mountains, and they were dazzling especially if one as never before seen a tea plantation. The mountain sides are beautiful shades of green and bushes are all manicured and separated by paths. Shade trees are planted in organized rows to help the plants and the individual plantations seem to have separate mountain sides staked out. We were only able to get a short glimpse of the beauty of the area, before we reached the resort.
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| Windermere bungalow |
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| Country around Munnar |
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| Tea Fields in Munnar |
After we check in, shown to our rooms, and freshened up we had a couple of hours of free time before dinner. There was an outdoor tea shop on the grounds so we headed there for a late afternoon tea. Plan tea was available but not recommended. We had ginger tea and cardamom tea that was served with fresh picked bananas, dipped in batter and deep fried. They were delicious and along with the tea were an excellent pick-me-up that took us to the dinner hour. We went to dinner and it started with hot towels, chicken broth, vegetables and noodles. The second course was sliced beets, potatoes in a curry sauce, seasoned chicken, lamb, peas and cashews in a light curry and basmati rice - all of it delicious. This feast was then capped off with some of the best custard we have ever eaten. We finished off the dinner with cups of tea and headed for our room for the night.
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| Harvesting Tea Leaves |
The next day we had a full day of sightseeing on the schedule. The weather cleared and the rain left the area sparkling clean and clear. Our driver, Viney, was waiting to take us on our next adventure. We headed for the Eravikulam National Park. We took a shuttle bus to the road’s end and hiked up to the end of the trail. I was a wonderful view of the whole area and the home of the Tahs (mountain goat). After walking to the head of the trail we caught the shuttle bus back to our car. The ride down the mountain was, according to Julie, like a high end, 15 minute carnival ride down the twisty, narrow road. It was exhilarating. After a great lunch at a restaurant setting on the side of a mountain with views up and down the valley, we went to a tea museum to lean what happens to the tea leaves once they are harvested from the bushes. We learned a little about how the tea was sliced and diced, pulverized, dried, separated and finally packaged. We also were shown where white team comes from and got a short film on the tea industry in the area.
Our last stop for the day included a drive through the village of Munnar bustling with shoppers, cars, buses, cab-rickshaws, dogs and cows to an elephant park where all 3 of us took a 30 minute ride on July the elephant. July is pronounced by the keeper as Julie. There was instant bonding between Julie and July. Our traveling partner Ann is about 20 years our senior so we put her on the front of the elephant and off we went through the woods with Ann hollering about why she had agreed to this ride. We all had a good laugh and great fun and got to feed July pineapple at the end of the ride.
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| Riding July |
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| July - Julie, Ann and Dave |
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