We enjoyed staying in Munnar at a lovely resort nestled into the hillside. Here’s a picture taken in the early morning as the sunlight was breaking over the nearby hills.
We climbed from Munnar to Kundala lake and up to the Top Station, where we were rewarded with more amazing views of the tea plants. The trees are Silver Oaks, and they are planted throughout the tea because they act like sponges during the rainy season, then release water into the soil for the tea plants to absorb.
We learned that tea plants can produce for 150 years! The mono-cropping here in Munnar is similar to wine grapes in Napa Valley. We saw pesticide being applied to the tea, which made us want to try to drink organic tea. This is a picture of where the tea workers stay while they are picking the tea, then they return to their homes in nearby villages. We will be visiting a tea factory, so we’ll be able to explain more about the process of drying the tea in a later post.
This is pepper. The vine needs to climb up a support, so it’s grown on trees. There are 4 colors of peppercorns used in cooking that all come from this same plant: green pepper which is picked unripe and preserved with either freeze drying or with vinegar, black pepper which is picked unripe and cooked (usually boiled) and then dried, red pepper which is picked ripe and preserved with either freeze drying or vinegar, and white pepper which is picked ripe and soaked in water so that the outer skin comes off, and then it’s dried.
Seeing all the pepper vines and peppercorns drying by the side of the road reminded us of Vivan Sundaram’s piece in the Kochi Biennale show entitled “Black Gold”. Shown here are terracotta shards from the ancient city of Muziris. Sundaram created a “city” of pottery shards, then flooded it with water and 40 lbs of pepper to create this moonscape installation, representing the destruction of the ancient city. He captured the flooding process on video, which was projected onto the floor in three screens in a nearby gallery.
The route from Munnar to Thekkady was on smaller, undulating roads that rose and fell through the countryside and villages. Our guide Safi asked if we wanted to try an alternate route that he had heard about the evening before. We agreed and headed up a hard-packed dirt road for some off-road adventuring.
The detour was about 4 kilometers long and took us along a ridgeline that was just inside the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. We reached a spot with great views of the valley below.
The town of Thekkady is the gateway to the Periyar National Park. It’s home to 350 wild elephants, a handful of tigers, sloth bears, deer, monkeys and a plethora of bird species. We took a guided walk early in the morning just after dawn.
We didn’t see any elephants or tigers, but we did see some beautiful birds, including gray hornbills, kingfishers, parakeets, a white-bellied treepie, barbets (both white-checked and crimson-fronted), a flame-backed woodpecker, an orange-headed thrush, mynas (hill, common, and jungle), crested-serpent eagles, and greater racket-tail drongos pictured below – see if you can spot the 2 “rackets” which extend off the end of each bird’s tail.
We also saw an Indian deer called a sambar, a Nilgiri langur, and a group of bonnet macaques eating the fruit of a huge banyan tree.
The banyan tree, which is also known as the “strangler fig,” starts life when its seed germinates in a crack or crevice on a host tree, and sends vine-like roots to the ground. It then slowly envelopes the host tree creating some very dramatic shapes.
While visiting Periyar National Park we stayed two nights at the Greenwoods resort. We were able to enjoy Ayurvedic massages where we were massaged from head to foot with scented oil , then we relaxed with steam heat – it was really wonderful for our muscles and skin! Greenwoods hast a lovely tea house, a true tree house, where we enjoyed the pleasant breezes while sipping masala tea (sweetened black tea spiced with cardamom, cinnamon, star anise and black pepper).
We climbed from Munnar to Kundala lake and up to the Top Station, where we were rewarded with more amazing views of the tea plants. The trees are Silver Oaks, and they are planted throughout the tea because they act like sponges during the rainy season, then release water into the soil for the tea plants to absorb.
We learned that tea plants can produce for 150 years! The mono-cropping here in Munnar is similar to wine grapes in Napa Valley. We saw pesticide being applied to the tea, which made us want to try to drink organic tea. This is a picture of where the tea workers stay while they are picking the tea, then they return to their homes in nearby villages. We will be visiting a tea factory, so we’ll be able to explain more about the process of drying the tea in a later post.
This is pepper. The vine needs to climb up a support, so it’s grown on trees. There are 4 colors of peppercorns used in cooking that all come from this same plant: green pepper which is picked unripe and preserved with either freeze drying or with vinegar, black pepper which is picked unripe and cooked (usually boiled) and then dried, red pepper which is picked ripe and preserved with either freeze drying or vinegar, and white pepper which is picked ripe and soaked in water so that the outer skin comes off, and then it’s dried.
Seeing all the pepper vines and peppercorns drying by the side of the road reminded us of Vivan Sundaram’s piece in the Kochi Biennale show entitled “Black Gold”. Shown here are terracotta shards from the ancient city of Muziris. Sundaram created a “city” of pottery shards, then flooded it with water and 40 lbs of pepper to create this moonscape installation, representing the destruction of the ancient city. He captured the flooding process on video, which was projected onto the floor in three screens in a nearby gallery.
The route from Munnar to Thekkady was on smaller, undulating roads that rose and fell through the countryside and villages. Our guide Safi asked if we wanted to try an alternate route that he had heard about the evening before. We agreed and headed up a hard-packed dirt road for some off-road adventuring.
The detour was about 4 kilometers long and took us along a ridgeline that was just inside the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. We reached a spot with great views of the valley below.
The town of Thekkady is the gateway to the Periyar National Park. It’s home to 350 wild elephants, a handful of tigers, sloth bears, deer, monkeys and a plethora of bird species. We took a guided walk early in the morning just after dawn.
We didn’t see any elephants or tigers, but we did see some beautiful birds, including gray hornbills, kingfishers, parakeets, a white-bellied treepie, barbets (both white-checked and crimson-fronted), a flame-backed woodpecker, an orange-headed thrush, mynas (hill, common, and jungle), crested-serpent eagles, and greater racket-tail drongos pictured below – see if you can spot the 2 “rackets” which extend off the end of each bird’s tail.
We also saw an Indian deer called a sambar, a Nilgiri langur, and a group of bonnet macaques eating the fruit of a huge banyan tree.
The banyan tree, which is also known as the “strangler fig,” starts life when its seed germinates in a crack or crevice on a host tree, and sends vine-like roots to the ground. It then slowly envelopes the host tree creating some very dramatic shapes.
While visiting Periyar National Park we stayed two nights at the Greenwoods resort. We were able to enjoy Ayurvedic massages where we were massaged from head to foot with scented oil , then we relaxed with steam heat – it was really wonderful for our muscles and skin! Greenwoods hast a lovely tea house, a true tree house, where we enjoyed the pleasant breezes while sipping masala tea (sweetened black tea spiced with cardamom, cinnamon, star anise and black pepper).
