139 kms from Ernakulam: The highest altitude1524
m town of Kerala with a cool bracing climate
with extensive tea and cardemon plantations,
lakes, and streams and beautiful viewes
of lowlaying clouds and mist filled valleys.
The highest peadk of south India. Anaiomudi
2595 m is only a short distance from here.
Smaller than more ooty or Kodaikanal, Litter-and
crowd-free Munnar handles tourism with grance.
This hill station's soaring mountain peak
and miles of rolling tea plantations are
unmatched, inviting long hikes and longer
vistas. The scruffy little town has friendly
inhabitations who slow down their jeeps
to enquire if travellers need help.
It was a scotsman, J.D. Munro, who kicked
off the town's development during the 1870s,
creating a fiefdom for generations of Scottish
tea planters. When Munro and friends finally
left in 1970s, they left their rolling oceans
of tea to Tata tea Ltd., an offshoot of
the same Parsi owned mega-company that build
the bus that brought into into town. Today,
the precisely manicured tea plantations
continue to dominate every aspect of llife
in Munnar, though the burgeoning tourist
industry contributes more and more to the
local economy every year.
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