Munnar: A touch and go trip

After a long time, which is almost an year we, I have joined my colleagues for another trip to the god’s own country. Last time we went to Wayanad and this time it to Munnar. And this time the fun is bigger as we are 23 in number. But this is some sort of touch and go trip as it was decided as a weekend trip with no extension for another day. Considering we are travelling from Chennai it was difficult to see any place except the board saying ‘Munnar Welcomes you’ 😀 😀

This is the best photo I can find where we are all together:

In front (From left): Sujai, Pravin, Mathivanan, Lenin, Ravi, Ann, Sasiprabha, Archana, Lakshmi, Meenu, Bala, Ganesh

Back: Amit(you could see a head behind Mathivanan), Praval, Ravi, Raja, Sreejit, Karthik, Baiju, me.

The Start:

We all started by last Friday straight from office by night 10 to Udumalpet by bus. And the high spirits of the trip was about to be brought down by the bus conductor who played one of the dumbest tamil movie, ‘Masilamani’. But it good that it allowed some conversation between us to make fun of that movie. ‘Some good comes with the bad’ 🙂 🙂 After a little Chit chat I slept well enough that I woke just half an hour before the place we have to get down.

Thirumoorthy falls:

We reached Udumalpet by morning 7 and the van booked for us came a few minutes later as we headed towards ‘Thirumoorthy falls’ which is some 20 kilometers from there for bath. I had expectations about this place and didn’t’ even know it is existed. But it’s a real good place scenic and also a good place to have a bath. We have been said that there is no water from falls that time but then luckily it’s not true. It has a temple along with it and we have to walk a good distance of a kilometer to reach the falls. The path is fully covered with trees and mountains. Oh! Forgot to mention, the monkeys. There are enough monkeys which will easily out populate the no. of people visiting the falls. Its along time since I have took bath in a falls but I am not excited about this as I have fear for places surrounded by water. This falls is not frightening as the water fell from a perfect height and amount of water is good. As the place is not that well-known one the crowd is also quite less which allowed us to take a good bath.

Another too good meal in Kerala:

It took more than an hour for everybody to get bath and dressed up which is around 11:30, which meant we miss our breakfast. We made up for that by taking enough spiced up mangoes but still the hunger on that day was too much. But no hotels nearby and we traveled another 1 hour to find one in a town called Marayoor. A very small town with shops for only 100 meters but they had a good hotel which is much for our delight. Once again we ordered anything called non-vegetarian and finished them in jiffy. Its a very satisfying meal and I have to say Kerala is one of the best place to eat. After 3 trips in 4 years to various parts of Kerala I can assure that. Another best thing about having food there is, the after meal lime soda. And its damn cheap there. Only 5 rupees. If I have the same in my office it will be some 15 rupees and they don’t even mix the salt or sugar well with soda 😡

Picture perfect place:

A good sleep always a good meal and what better place than a window seat while travelling. After an hour of sleep, the van stopped by as everybody in the van found a place which is so picturesque and thought that it will become more beautiful by our presence 😛 😛 Its a kind of place I wanted to see for a long time. A low bridge with a small river running under it over small rocks. It’s so perfect. No wonder we spent more than an hour there. Superb place and don’t miss this one if you go to munnar by this route.

Reached Munnar and Silver clouds:

By evening 6, we reached the board which screamed ‘Munnar welcomes you’ a point we wanted to touch. And I am glad as we travelled a good 20 KMS after that. Some shopping was done in the town for an hour and we marched towards the hotel ‘Silver Clouds’. By 8:30, we reached there and all get dressed to have a good dinner. After the dinner we enjoyed the campfire. That was the first time after 17 years I am in a camp fire but the way the hotel guys arranged those woods would frighten anybody. It about 6 feet and the fire is for about 8 feet. And the temperature now is almost the same as in Chennai in night. Did they tried to make feel ourselves home there???? 😉 God knows. Its a fun filled night thanks largely to Praval who almost made everybody laugh with his antics. All this fun continued till morning 2 AM and we are off to sleep cursing the ‘not-so-cold’ weather of Munnar. Weather is pretty ordinary that nobody shivered after spending some 4 hours in open.

Rooms are too good for comfort and slept well only to wake up after 8. But the morning is not typical of Munnar with Sun blazing away. Even though it didn’t made us to sweat, its not the kind of climate we expected. We had a nice breakfast which consist of Appam, Idly and Kadala curry, a Kerala special. Good thing about it is, I never felt my tummy is full even after gulping twice the quantity I usually have. After breakfast we all started from there around 10:30. As we reached munnar almost by the dark we couldn’t see the beauty of it but in the morning we din’t missed it. The travel in those hill station is quite exciting. I t allows us to observe and enjoy the beauty of the place unlike the flat highways. The valleys and the tea gardens are really beautiful to see but the climate is horrible compared to munnar’s standard’s. We stopped at a place called View or valley point for another photo session. And before we could travel for another 10 minutes few suggested that it’s not at all good after coming all the way here and not taking picture by standing in tea gardens. So another photo session happened there for some 20 minutes.

Even after travelling for some 1 and a half days we didn’t seen a place in particular so we decided go for hi-speed boating. And its quite good and also worth for the money. For the first time I have worn the life jacket on me 😀 :D. After all this clock ticked to 3 PM and the alarm in the stomach reminded we are yet to have our lunch. We reached the munnar town by 3:30 PM and had a good heavy meal in Hotel Guru’s. It’s really good guys for Non-veg. Try it whenever you go there. And from there it’s all about travelling and more travelling as we caught the bus for Chennai in Tirupur some time beyond our scheduled departure time. But thats a bus of 30 seater and we occupied 23 seats. So nobody questioned us or made a scene of it. But the travel running guys really had a hard time in making us realize that we are way behind the time and not letting us out once we entered into the bus 😀 😀 And there we are, back to the insane world of complex programs by Monday.

Pictures:

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Personally I loved this trip over Wayanad as I enjoyed myself much by singing and dancing while travelling… its quite fun 😀 😀

PS: The Slideshow option in WordPress is really exciting… Superb one 🙂 🙂 and also they have introduced a new theme called ‘Inuit’ which is very nice. Try it guys. I have previewed it and the blog looked great. But only drawback is there is no custom header.

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