DAY 5
Continuation of previous post...In case you haven't read that, here is the link
Done with this we headed for our
next destination, a “Tea Museum”. How can you not expect to have one of these
in a tea estate and then how can you miss one of these when you have an
opportunity to? Thus there we were… standing at the entry of the museum buying
tickets for the museum (mentioning this because it was an expensive entry…but
an experience worthwhile). Once inside we got to see a video about the history
of this tea estate Munnar-how the idea originated, the growth of plantations,
settling of many farmers from nearby states, British involvement, development
of various facilities in and around Munnar like electrification and
establishment of rail structure… etc, etc. In short it was a knowledgeable
flick.
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| Scaled Plant...Thorough inspection going on at the other end! |
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| One of the cutting stages |
Next, we saw a scaled manufacturing plant in operation and got to learn
a little about tea. The process involves four stages of cutting (of leaves)
followed by fermentation, drying and filtering into different sizes. The finest
particles are termed as “tea dust” and impart strong colour (a favourite choice
of the common man) while the bigger particles add flavor and fragrance with
almost no colour (quite popular amongst connoisseurs of tea).
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| Filtering In Process |
Another piece of
information…Green tea which has become quite popular these days is manufactured
differently with no fermentation happening in the process and hence the time to
get the final product is roughly thrice
as compared to the usual product, justifying the high cost to customer. There was also a presentation on the right
way to have tea. In a nutshell it suggested that tea is best taken without milk, but I know habits die hard (still mentioning as
even if one of the readers brings about a change in his/her style of drinking
it will be a blog worth writing). We came back to Munnar, had our lunch at the
same place (fifth meal here…Really amazing food! Must try for anyone…goes by
the name of “ANNAPOORNA”) and headed for our next destination “Periyar”.
We had enquired as to how to
reach Periyar from our hotel manager and verified the information from our
reliable Dhaba waiter (Yes! It was usually the same guy who served us…of the
five meals we had there) and it appeared he provided us with some valuable
inputs. And we went along with the knowledge imparted to us. There isn’t any
direct bus to periyar from this place and hence we first had to board a bus to
“Theni” wherefrom we could catch a
bus to “Thekkady” (A town 5 kms from
Periyar Reserve…and the place where most of the hotels are located).
Note: One can however find accommodation at periyar reserve
as well, if he/she is willing to shell out the amount of money usually demanded
by 5 star hotels... (We obviously went against this decision…coz we were
neither going on a honeymoon nor on a business trip…LOL)
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| It's Still Kerala |
Coming back to buses…two buses
ply each day and we caught the 1330 hrs one (Oops…forgot when the other one
departs) and it took nearly four hours to reach the intermediate stop “Theni”
which is located in Tamil Nadu. As we crossed the state border once again the
distinction was quite clearly visible, this time though, it wasn’t the roads
but the dry and dismal state of the state which gave away its identity. It is
the topography and the weather which can be blamed apart from the
administration (for a change) for this particular condition of the state. The
Western Ghats lie almost at the Kerala and Tamil Nadu border and the monsoon
comes from the south-west direction, hence wetting the lands of Kerala but
leaving the state behind the mountains crying for water. And hence I would once
again like to say “KERALA IS TRULY BLESSED”.
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| Here comes Tamil Nadu |
Anyways, from Theni we caught the
second bus which took a mighty two hours to drop us at our destined location
-Thekkady. We booked ourselves into a decent hotel (after checking the
room…obviously) at a fair price. After relaxing for a while we headed for
dinner. To our surprise we found in Thekkady, branch of the restaurant where we
had one of our meals in Munnar (the only meal which we didn’t have at our usual
Munnar place). Since we knew the taste would suit the needs of a North-Indian
tongue (as we had already tried it out the day before) we had our dinner at
this place (It was a Marwari Restaurant).
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| Feeling sad for the dry and arid region! |
It served delicious food (Maybe we
were too hungry to notice any flaw in the food or we were just too happy to
find north Indian food in Periyar…Can’t say!). We roamed around for some time
after the dinner in the gentle breeze, made some enquires, went to our hotel
and slept peacefully.
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