We left Udaipur and flew back to Delhi for one night before catching an early morning flight to Kochi in southern India.
The moment we arrived, we were aware of the change in temperature and humidity, even though it has been hot – in the 30s – in Udaipur.
But in Kochi, it was also humid and tropical and we quickly saw banana plantations and lots of palm trees and some spectacular shows of bougainvillea as well as trumpet flowers.
From Kochi, our bus grunted and trundled its way into the Western Ghats mountains to reach our destination – Munnar, a town in the mountains where thousands of clipped tea plants pattern the hillsides with a lovely combed, tapestry look.
Apparently, this area was particularly popular with the British Raj elite during the late 19th century. We are high up – at least 1,600 metres (5,200 feet).
When we arrived at our hotel, Fragrant Nature, we were serenaded by a red-whiskered bulbul, a beautiful songbird with a red flash on its head.
We have come here to get a different taste of India and also to explore the Kerala backwaters.
To do this we will be going on three houseboats that move around the backwaters and give you a unique close up view. More about that later.
For our first morning here, we all climbed into jeeps to go up the mountain to the tea plantation owned by Harrisons Malayalam Limited, the largest producer of tea in Southern India.
The road up the hillside was being widened because tens of thousands of botanists and flower lovers are expected to flood the area this fall for the flowering of Strobilanthes kunthianus.
Apparently, there are 400 species of strobilanthes in the world, 38 of which are indigenous to this part of India.
But S. kunthianus is the only one that flowers once every 12 years, making it a particularly unusual sight to see.
It is a shrub that is native to forests and hillsides of the Western Ghats, the mountain range that we are in here in Munnar. The last time the hillsides were covered with these blue-violet flowers was in 2006, so 2018 is the next big event.
This was one of the stories we heard as we moved up the hillside to the tea plantation. We passed groves of eucalyptus, which apparently is slated to be chopped down and replaced by more tea plants in the near future.
It was a bumpy but exhilarating ride with spectacular mountain views. We climbed and climbed to about 5,000 feet before we arrived at the plantation.
The hillsides at the plantation are immaculately planted with two varieties of tea plants (Camellia sinensis).
The groomed, clipped, combed look of the hillsides give the landscape a serene and peaceful atmosphere, probably because trimmed shrubs give the impression of an elegant, formal Italian embroidery parterre.
We were amazed by the spectacular views over the plantation and up to the peaks of the Western Ghats mountains in the distance.
The jeeps dropped us off so we could walk at leisure. We found cows feeding on weeds among the tea plants. The cows had their heads down and had to be encouraged to look up for the photographs.
They used the gap between the rows of plants to walk and our guide, Hadlee, pointed out that they never damage the plants.
Further up the hillside, we came across a group of women clipping the tea with shears with a box attached. In China, we had seen tea picked but never using this method, which seemed very efficient.
The women were extremely friendly and gracious and allowed me to have a go at clipping and they even said I was doing not a bad job.
The workers live on the plantation and although are not paid very highly, they do get free housing and health care, education for their children, a pension and other benefits. I was told they love living in their community and working together.
When we had exhausted ourselves walking in the fields – the temperature was soaring to 36 C – we took the jeeps back down the hill to the factory where we were able to taste tea as well as see the process used for producing it.
Natural as well as mechanical methods are used in the factory to dry and roll and grind and sort the tea according to grade. Tips are used to make white tea, two top leaves to make green tea and the whole clipping used to make black tea. We got to taste all the teas.
We learned that each tea bush is clipped every 15 – 20 days without which it would grow into a tree. We saw how deep the roots go down in places and it was easily two to three times the height of plants.
We also learned that new plants were being planted in long straight rows instead of in a higgledy-piggledy fashion to reduce soil erosion.
This planting method also means more plants can be planted – more than 4,500 compared to 2,500 in the same space.
The English first got to know tea in China. However, the method of growing it and harvesting it was kept secret and the tea itself was regarded as a product as precious as gold.
When the English hit on the idea of planting tea in India, they picked locations that were similar to Assam and Yunnan highlands. In the 1800s, they planted a lot of tea in India.
Today the owners of the plantation we visited produce about 20 million kg every year and the company has 12 tea factories.
After a light picnic lunch, we boarded the jeeps again and drove back into Munnar where we walked through the town and into the local market, which was clean and well organized and where the store owners were friendly and did not put pressure on us in any way to buy.
We came away very grateful for their kindness and for allowing us to get a closer look and a more intimate experience of the town.
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Variety of pix taken in Munnar
