December 13, 2014. Green Thekaddy

We left Munnar after breakfast and drove about 3 hours through the jungly mountain.  We saw 2 different cars stopped to let passengers throw up from carsickness, due to all of the curves.  It was a beautiful drive through fields of  coffee,  cardamom, bananas, vegetables, tapioca and hibiscus.  

Thekaddy is a lovely town.  It has several names including one that means teak wood forest.  Our hotel is wonderful.  It is called Spice Village, and is seriously into the environment.  Our Eco-friendly room has toiletries in cute little refill jars.  The hotel makes its own paper, from spent cardamom processing, using it for lampshades, brochures, and jewelry.  They even provide reusable cloth laundry bags.  

We went on a boat tour of the wildlife preserve.  Usually, wild elephants are seen, but recently there has been a lot of rain, so they arenot coming to the lake to drink.  We did see breathtakingly beautiful kingfishers, wild boars, deer and gaur.  

They made everyone wear life jackets.  

At first, we balked at this, then saw other sunken tour boats and left them on!

There were a lot of monkeys around.

December 12, 2014. Really enjoying Munnar

Then, we visited a tea museum to learn the history of tea in India and to see how it is processed.  Some interesting facts....

*The British introduced Indians to tea-drinking.

*Green, black, and white tea all come from the same plant.  It is the part of the leave used and the process that differentiate them.

* Black Tea that  is drunk with milk is different from black tea drunk with milk.  (I think most Americans just buy one type of tea bag and serve it with or without milk.

These are the tea leaves

We went back to town, and the guide dropped us off at a local restaurant, at our request. We were definitely the only tourists there.  They kindly served us forks and spoons in a bowl of boiling water.  The locals, of course, just use their hands. George and I  shared a fish curry, a local specialty, and Alexis had a mushroom dish.  It came with something called Kerala Meals which is brown rice and various chutneys.  The waiter walked around the restaurant refilling people's plates with rice; we didn't even make it through the first serving.  We drink the regular water now, not just bottled water.  At this restaurant, the water in the pitcher was pink.  Later we learned that it is a custom here to boil drinking water, then add herbs that are supposed to improve health, and are tinted pink.

We took a drive to a lake and dam.  More tea plantations along the way.  We looked for wild elephants that live in the hills,but didn't see any, just the electric fence keeping them off the highway.

Back at the hotel, we strolled around the spice plantation.  We ate dinner at the hotel.  George and I had fish cooked in a banana leaf.  Alexis had an okra dish.  All very nice.  

December 11, 2014. Munnar shrangri la

Our villa is up in the clouds.  We had a drink outside our room, and listened to the birds sing.  It is kind of like a high-altitude rain forest.  Due to the altitude, it is nice and cool.  

In the evening, we went into town and watched a martial arts show.  This area is a honeymoon destination.  There were lots of couples at the show, with girls wearing their wedding-day sparkly bangles.

We also saw these ladies in a dress worn by a certain group of Muslims.

The show was pretty good.  It ended with guys jumping through fire rings.  

We stopped at a vegetarian restaurant for dinner.  We shared a thali (like a sampler platter) with some regional foods.  

December 11, 2014. Up to Munnar

One of the first things we noticed is that the men wear a type of skirt, that they hike up in the heat. Different colors are worn for different occasions.  

We stopped at a spice plantation.  They grow trees and plants for edible spices and for natural medicines.  A guy took us on a nice tour.  We saw so many plants.....coffee, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, tamarind, ginger, lemongrass, peppercorns, eucalyptus, and plants that will cure most anything.....diabetes, obesity, stomach ailments, hair loss, impotency, high blood pressure, poor memory, etc. etc

Here is Alexis next to cinnamon tree....

Here is George next to cocoa pods...

There were also beautiful flowers, many used for their perfume.

Our hotel is way high in the hills.  It is a real, functioning spice plantation.  The registration area once was a cardamom drying room.  We have our own little villa, with a view of the hills, terraced with tea plants.  

December 12, 2014. Sightseeing in Munnar

We had a great breakfast at our hotel, in a thatched roof hut.  We had fresh-squeezed pineapple juice and lovely fruit.  They have 14 varieties of bananas here, each with its own name and flavor.

We headed to the town of Munnar where we picked up our guide. We spent the morning at India's largest national park.  We went high in the mountains in search of a rare mountain goat called tahr.  We saw about 10 of the 1000 that are in the park.  There are only 2000 in the world.  We took a park bus up to the walking path.  The hairpin turns were so severe, and the road so narrow, that the bus had to backup to make the turns.  I sat next to an Indian lady.  She must have thought it was special to sit next to a foreigner, as she took a selfie of the 2 of us!

There are tea plantations all over, on terraces ip and down the mountains.  So lush and green.

Twisty road among tea plantations

We learned that part of the movie "Life of Pi" was filmed here...the church, mosque and temple scenes at the beginning.  

December 11, 2014. On the road again in India

We had an early morning...took a cab at 4:30 AM to the Hyderabad airport.  This trip takes us to south India.  Our plane stopped in Bangalore, which is a booming, modern city, then on to Kochi, our destination.   Our first sign that this might be a different experience was when about 50 barefoot men boarded the airplane.  Most were bare chested with flower leis and black skirt-like bottoms.  They all balanced a wrapped-up blanket on their heads.  We found out later that there is a famous temple here in Kochi where Hindus make a 41-day pilgrimage each year.  It involves fasting and walking up a steep hill barefoot.

When we landed in Kochi, our tour company representative was there to meet us.  

Nagu (Meredith's father-in-law) has arranged this entire trip.  It is always so reassuring when these chaps meet us as we disembark from planes and trains.

This region is so different from the India we have seen so far.  It is very tropical and hilly.  Palm trees everywhere.  Green, green.  We left the city of Kochi, on the Arabian Sea, and drove east and up through the hills.  In addition to palm trees, we saw lots of bamboo, banana trees, pineapple plantations, rice paddies, cocoa trees, and beautiful tropical flowers.  It was about 90 degrees, and humid from last night's rain.  We also drove by tapioca and rubber tree plantations.

 This is a rubber tree plantation, where they cut the bark and the rubber trips.

We drove through winding, hill roads, spotting monkeys and dodging cars as drivers tried to pass on curvy roads.

December 10, 2014. Hyderabad Old City

We (George, Meredith, Gautham, Alexis, Bala, and I) took a tour of Charminar, part of the Old City here.  We climbed up the ancient tower, which was once one of the main gates to the city.

The streets were very crowded; it is a popular market area.  This is a view from the top.

It is a Muslim district..  Many women with burqas, walking, on motorcycles, and in the 3-wheeler rickshaws. 

We shopped on the busy streets, buying bangles and just trying to absorb everything for sale.  Bala bought some wood apples, a fruit she uses to make pickles.  It is a favorite of elephants, too.

We stopped for lunch at a Muslim restaurant, ordering biryani, a Hyderabad specialty.  Since it is Muslim, beef was available.  We bought one beef biryani, the first time we've eaten beef in India.  (Hindus don't eat beef).  The other biryanis were chicken and a veg one.

$4 for more than we could eat.  

We stopped on the way home to pick up appetizers for dinner...spicy lamb brains and mutton tandoori.