After arriving in Munnar yesterday, we all woke up early to have our breakfast and then head to DTPC‘s office for our full day tour. DTPC is the District Tourism Promotion Council. You can call a day before to reserve your seats for the tour or just show up on the day of the tour at their office by 8am to get your seats.
After having breakfast, we took an auto-rickshaw to the DTPC office.
This is the DTPC tourism officeWe were the first to arrive. We paid up while waiting for the other tourists joining us today.The main tour DTPC offers includes a stop over at Eravikulam National Park. Unfortunately, Eravikulam National Park was closed to the public as it was breeding season for the Nilgiri Tahr, a deer commonly found in Munnar and the Nilgiri Hills.It was time for us to board our Tempo Traveller van and begin our tourI know I’ll be seeing sights like this every minute of the journey but tea plantations never stop being beautiful to look at
Some flowers were in bloom along the wayThe driver (cum guide) would stop along the way to show us sights like this — massive beehivesOur first stop was at the Carmelagiri Elephant park
You can choose to ride an elephant but the cost is not included in the price of the tour. There’s growing concerns at such elephant ‘parks’ where these animals are beaten and tortured when young to tame them enough to carry tourists for such rides. In Thailand, most elephant ride parks have since changed as foreigners rather go to elephant centers that let you bathe and feed elephants instead of riding them. So I don’t know when the same will happen here in Kerala too.
Nobody in our tour group wanted to ride elephants. So we moved on.
This is what a tea plantation looks like just after planting the tea plantsThe mighty women workers of Munnar’s tea plantations. They fought tea plantation owners & corrupt unions and won their right for better pay.
Our next stop was Mattupetty dam, the largest in MunnarThe driver stopped the vehicle across the road and told us we had a few minutes to spend checking out the views of the reservoirThis is one sideThis is the other sideSpeedboat rides and paragliding are on offer at the reservoirOn the way, the driver showed us an institution that is a Kerala-Swiss project. This was the first frozen semen station in South and South-East Asia.Our next stop was Echo PointThe van dropped us off at this spot and told us we had 15 minutesEcho point earns it name from… well, you shout out into the valley and you hear an echoI didn’t see anyone attempting it so I didn’t try it myselfThese home made chocolates are all over Munnar but I would refrain from buying them. Most of it is compound chocolate and way over-priced considering it doesn’t even contain much pure cocoa
Our tour van moved to our next destination.
A village in the distanceWe would briefly pause at plantations that looked very scenicThe next stop on the tour was Kundala damWe had 30 minutes to walk around and take photosThis is another hydroelectric project in Kerala. The state gets most of its electricity generated using hydel dams — Kundala is one of the smaller dams.We walked furtherI wish I could tell you how much further this goes but I had no time to explore.They do have horse rides on offer if you wish to explore the area
Pedal boats can also be hired for Rs. 300 (2 adults + 1 child) if you wish to ride them on the reservoir.
The next post will be stops at Top Station, the Flower Garden and a visit to a spice garden.
