OUR TRIP TO KERALA - PART ONE

PREAMBLE TO THIS POST
I have not contributed to this blog for some years now. This was not intentional. Life at the workplace had been, as they say these days, challenging when I was close to retirement. I retired in 2008 and relocated to my home town, about 1,500 km away. Putting down roots in a new place always comes with its own set of problems and it took us time to find our feet. Immediately after that, we had to shift again, this time in the same area where we lived but to a new house. Relocation we found was relocation, whether it was 1,500 km away or in the same town. We had to go through the process once again. At the end of it all, my wife and I were tired but contented at having settled down at last. One more factor was that, in the last 6 years, we were blessed with two lovely granddaughters. These were welcome events but needed a lot of travelling and consequent dislocation since our son and his wife live abroad.
Now at last I have started picking up the threads of my life on the net and that brought me to “My Page”, which is, of course, one of my blogs. I hope to be fairly regular this time and publish more posts with some degree of regularity. My readers, please bear with me.
OUR TRIP TO KERALA:
I am devoting this post to a short account of our trip to Kerala, a state in Southern India, popularly known as “God’s Own Country” on account of its scenic beauty. Our trip was fairly short and was devoted to visiting areas of interest in and around Cochin, or Kochi as it is called today.
My wife and I flew down by a morning flight to Kochi. We could see a coastline fringed with coconut palms from the air. The airport building at Kochi was beautiful – it was constructed in a traditional Kerala design- with lovely red sloping roofs covered with faux tiles. It was not a monolithic building but split into small sections, each with its own share of red roofs. All in all, it was a welcoming sight offering a traditional welcome to the visitor.
A map of Kerala state is given below. The map shows the different districts of the state. Kerala is divided into 14 districts. Kochi lies in the Ernakulam district. Our trip took us to various places in the adjoining districts of Idukki and Kottayam.
We stayed overnight at Kochi and started by road the next morning. Our destination was the hill town of Munnar, known for its cool weather and picturesque tea gardens. On the way we saw the famous Hill Palace which was built by the Rajas of Cochin in 1865. Today it houses a museum with many fine relics including precious stones and jewellery. Unfortunately, photography inside the palace is prohibited. I can only give a picture of the palace taken from the outside. The gardens surrounding the palace have rare medicinal plants.

We started going uphill shortly after the Hill Palace and shortly passed some lovely waterfalls, one of which is shown here.

We passed through winding roads with many hairpin bends, all the time steadily going up till at last we came to a very green area with tea gardens on all sides. The bluish hills stretched away to the horizon. It was a lovely sight.
We had finally arrived at Munnar.
Munnar town is in the Kannan Devan Hills ( KDH ) Village and is in the Idukki district of Kerala. The region in and around Munnar varies in height from 1,450 meters (4,760 ft) to 2,695 meters (8,842 ft) above mean sea level. Munnar enjoys a salubrious climate with the temperature ranging from 5-25 °C in winter and 15-25 °C in summer.
Munnar is essentially a tea town. Tea cultivation was introduced to Munnar in the colonial times back in the 19^th century and tea gardens now cover almost every hillside. The green tea bushes are a lovely sight. Towards the afternoon, fog starts to creep up from the valleys and covers the hilltops too in a very short time. It is a sight to see. I share a few pictures of the tea gardens of Munnar with you.

The tea leaves are plucked mostly by women and they can be seen working here. The tree plant is not a bush although it appears like that in the photos. The plants are deliberately pruned to get a good crop of leaves. Each tea plant has an economic life of about 40 years.

The next picture shows the afternoon fog creeping up the valley. Fog can be seen in the morning too (next picture) but usually goes away as the sun comes up.
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To be continued .....