we zero-ed in on Munnar, Kerala. This was the one important hill-station in South India that i had not gone to so far. Given the challenge of traveling long distance with a 9 year old and a 11 month old, we decided to have a cut-journey.First have a night-stop to Madurai and then drive to Munnar from Madurai. Given our inclination to temples, Madurai also made perfect sense for the 1'st stop.
Day 1 , 29'th April : Bangalore - Madurai
Having serviced my Honda city just last week, i was very keen on giving it a good rush. However, the highway driving change after city driving always gets some adjusting to and i was in no mood to go beyond 85-90 Kmph. we left Bangalore at 7 am and had breakfast at Sri-krishna which is in the same complex as the coffee-day after Hosur, before Krishnagiri. The route is a straight one : Hosur-Krishnagiri-Dharamapuri-Salem-Namakkal-Karur-Dindigul-Madurai. ~440 km.
The only funny place is the right turn on the fly-over at Salem : be careful about only this turn , since straight will take you to chennai. we get numerous tolls on the way , so keep some spare change ready.
This time i used sygic on iphone to good use for navigation and it guided me almost close to the final destination : Hotel Madurai Residency on West Marret Street. Sygic software had this listed as one of the POIs. This street is a one-way and i took a slightly wrong turn at the circle in front of the Madurai station. Required me to go back again and finally landed up at the Hotel.
I had booked Madurai Residency through MakeMyTrip. Just OK , it's costlier and less quality if compared with equivalent Ginger hotel. Ordered simple lunch and had a well deserved nap.
Madurai is a typical town with really small roads - everything revolves around the main Meenakshi temple. The street names sound British period and the same street becomes north/west depending on where it is in relation to the temple.Rickshaws don't have meters and we have to negotitiate the price. In the evening, we headed to the Madurai Meenakshi temple. This guy took us to the North tower and coaxed into depositing our footwear inside a saree shop - you can definitely guess the reason.Once we walked a good distance close, there indeed was one for free !
Awesome temple - the historic Tamil Nadu temples are very different than the karnataka ones in one important respect : they are GIGANTIC ! The Madurai Meenakshi temple is actually almost like a fort - huge walls , huge/many pillars and huge space inside - we are left wondering where the temples are actually ! there are sign-boards to lead you inside. we wish we had taken a guide , but couldn't due to want of time.
They do not allow Cameras inside the temple - so i left that one back. Inside the temple, we first saw the temple elephant en-route to the main sanctum which was being fed by the visitors. There are two main deities - Sundaresh ( Lord Shiva ) and Meenakshi Amman and these are separate temples with separate queues.As is the norm now in many big temples , there are special passes for higher money and we took those to avoid the long queues.
We also saw a carnatic concert inside. The Pushkarni ( water pond ) near the Meenakshi is a very good place and we can have a quiet time on the steps here.The thousand pillar temple with the Nataraj is on another end is excellent and is provided good lighting - this has separate entry fee.They also sell variety of prasadams in a counter.
Came back and bought a few sarees for gifts in the same saree shop - it's pretty interesting how cleverly they try to coax women into buying 1 saree and then another and another - it's quite an art actually - maybe our chip design sales team use similar techniques ?
Later, we had excellent south indian dishes for dinner at Sree Sabareesh - There are actually 2 sree sabarees on the same street ( west perumal street , just parallel to the west marret street ) - i believe both are good . Especially recommended are the madurai idli , pongal and the cashew rava masala dosa .
The below Madurai temple pictures were actually taken on the 2'nd day morning - only outside pictures at west-tower.
Zillions of Hindu Gods :
Day 2, 30'th April 2013 : Madurai to Munnar
we started at 9:30 am from Madurai towards Munnar. Route : Madurai-Usilampatti-Theni-Bodi-Periyakanal ( not Munnar ) - 150 Km. Our destination : The Wind Munnar , in Periyakanal - 1 hour before Munnar. I saw this as being rated very high in TripAdvisor and had a direct booking.
The ghats only start at Bodi and are picturesque. Bodi in the ghats is the border between TN and Kerala. There was road widening work going on and we had to stop for almost 30 minutes for the cranes to clear some boulders. we reached Poopara after Bodi and took the road to Periyakanal. A small diversion on the left here on the Muttukad road takes us to the The Wind , boasting of cliff-edge rooms.
The hotel entrance :
The rooms themselves are on a sloping hill with the balcony facing gorgeous hills and valley :
The white patches on the rocky hills opposite are remnants of water marks which reflect sunlight - almost appears like snow :
we were greeted by a gorgeous sunset. As it turned out, this was the only sunset view we could have as the clouds and rain blocked the sun for the next 2 days !
Day 3 - 1'st May 2013 :
Woke up and rushed to the balcony again . This time, the mist over the valley below made for an astounding visual again !
Waiting for the breakfast in the restaurant , overlooking the valley :
Our sightseeing itinerary for that day- Mattupety dam, Top-station and back. we hired an Indica taxi for this. En-route , we stopped at a viewpoint :
Nachiket and I had fun doing a small bit of rock climbing :
The tea garden carpets everywhere :
we stopped at a small flower garden on the way to Matupetty. Nothing much to talk about and i recommend anyone to skip this ...
A good tea garden where people stop to have a picture - the unique lining of silver oaks makes this look better than other gardens ...
Matupetty lake has power boating. we were in pretty early otherwise queues can get long . They charged us 500/- for a 5 seater power boat ride for 20 minutes .
The next stop was echo point. we did scream loud and heard back the echos. The place is was littered at many places - i wish they took care of this better !
And do not buy cashews in the stalls that you see on the roadside - they seem attractive at low prices, but they are rank stale/bad. Also, the "fresh carrots" are not recommended because apparently they are grown with water that isn't good from any angle. Do not risk it.
we see the kundala dam also on this way. This being the time just before the monsoons, there was no water in kundala and we just drove ahead.
Final destination - Top station . This is called so because when there was cable car in Munnar, this was the last and highest station. It's got a highly recommended 360 degree viewpoint . The only downside is that this is quite a walk up and down from the parking area and can be hard on the knees , especially for the young and the old.
we had a heavy buffet lunch at T & U leisure hotel, on the outskirts of Munnar. Good spread, but slightly overpriced - hygenic anyday. They also had a bamboo baby cradle, which helped us have lunch while Niranjan was asleep in it . Small surprises !
we stopped for the Power-house waterfall on the way back :
After a tiring journey, the cold water hitting the feet on a rocky surface makes for a very relaxing acupressure experience !
Day 4 - 2'nd May 2013 : Sightseeing - Kolukumalai Tea gardens and factory
Woke up to mist all over and no sun. The clear hills of yesterday were all mist covered. very surreal .
The bison valley below with broken mist ...
Our itinerary - Go to Kolukkumalai - the highest tea plantation and highest tea factory on a road which can only be driven by skilled drivers in Mahindra Jeep. The best tea-garden views are to be found in this area.
we stopped at a fantastic viewpoint and walked for almost 2 kms where we touch the mist again and again .
A Pine tree - No wonder they grow here, where it felt so cold !
The tea factory manufactures tea using the traditional process - withering , rolling , roll breaking, fermentation , drying , fibre extraction and grading . The tea making tour in the factory is a must-have-experience.
Their tea is "really fresh" - we bought a few packets to gift and they were packed only an hour before !
Way back - bumpy ride, good views again ...
what flower are you ? Surely not the elusive "Nil" of the Nil-Giris ?
The Kolukkumalai easily is the highlight of the trip to Munnar. I would recommend this to anyone who plans a visit to Munnar. Don't miss this for anything.
we came back to the resort around 3:30 pm and we still had enough time. Our host Mr. Noby suggested we take a very small trek to the Dolmen hills that we saw every day from the balcony accompanied by a hotel staff.
These dolmen hills are near Munippara and they overlook the bison valley below. They have a group of four dolmen houses on the hills , with the fifth one being a cave.Our guide referred to them as the homes of the pandavas.
We went inside the cave for a sneak preview. Our guide told us that the caves would lead us directly through the mountain to an exit near the power-house water falls. Wanna believe that ?
Day 5 - 3'rd May 2013 :
After waiting in the queue for almost 1:30 hour, we were told that everyone had to stand in the queue ( we assumed that mothers holding babies would be an exception ! ) - we negotiated our way through that and boarded the marco polo buses that take the visitors into the park.
The buses drop everyone at a designated point and we have to walk further to see wild-life. As it turned out, we only were able to see Nilgiri Tahr - not one, but many since the breeding season had just ended.
we couldn't see any more animals and were asked to return back. It was pretty disappointing after the expectations. The only other animals we saw were on the boards only !
This park has the Anaimudi peak - the highest peak in south india . Unfortunately, the mist covered the views and we couldn't see this. we do get to see good peak views such as this one :
Nachiket seems to have developed liking towards rock climbing and tried this again after seeing others do it :
The bad part was that we had to wait again in a long queue just to get back into a bus to take us to the start point. we ran out of baby food and they didn't allow us to get in earlier. we had a tough time managing a hungry 11 month old.
Overall, i wouldn't recommend anyone going here - What you get to see is really not worth the patient wait.
After this, our driver took us to the Lakkom waterfalls. This is the typical place where you find hordes of people taking bath under the falls. Again, if you want serenity , give this a miss.
The one different thing here were the pebbles and stones in the water that leads you to the falls. Walking on the stones that protrude out as well those that don't was something that i don't recollect doing for a long time.
we came back and had a sumptuous lunch at Saravana Bhavan, Munnar which is very close to the bus stand. Excellent south indian full meals on banana plantain - me very pleased :-) .Also bought good banana chips and Jackfruit chips from the Saravana store, next to the hotel.
After lunch, we decided to visit the Tata Tea museum in Munnar. This is again the place where the Munnar travellers come to understand tea making. This musuem houses excellent old British time photos of Munnar and is worth a visit. They also have very old machines used during olden days - including mechanical calculators etc. They have an actual modern CTC based tea making shop and for people missing Kolukumalai , this is an alternate place to see that.
we had an interesting lecture in this place from a person on why indians are pot-bellied , why they should drink green tea like chinese - it was quite funnny and educative at the same time ! In any case, we ended up buying green-tea from here ...
Again stopped in Krishna Spices and bought good cardamom, good home made chocolates and Masala tea drop bottles - these are concentrated liquids - a drops is added to normal tea to make masala chai.
Came back to the resort and cleared all my dues for early pack-up next day.
A word about the resort - this is a very new resort and Mr.Noby is an excellent host. He is still in the process of setting up and i felt the staff was still leaner than what i would have expected. The rooms do not have A/C (we don't need one here !) and have amazing views. This place is not meant as a full-fledged resort and do not expect things like swimming pool and gaming centres - rather it's a perfect place for unwinding.
The restaurant is good and provides just the right breakfast. For lunch and dinner, I felt the food was priced higher especially given that we don't have any choice in that location. Other than that one thing, everything was very like-able about this place.
Day 6 - 4'th May 2013 : Munnar - Bangalore
Got up early , cleaned my car with a bucketful of water , had early breakfast at 7 am and started from Munnar at 7:30 am .
Munnar-Theni-Dindigul-Karur-Namakkal-Salem-Dharmapuri-Krishnagiri-Hosur-Bangalore. ~520 kms.
I drove at good speed this time. Stopped only at Salem in a hotel just after the left turn towards Bangalore and had a decent lunch. Surprisingly, the kids managed just fine. we reached Bangalore in good time at 6 pm, just under 11 hours drive covering 500+ km.
Live to Drive, eh ?
