When the word Kerala is mentioned you will definitely think of houseboats,temples,elephants ,coconut trees,tea and spice gardens.Munnar is mainly famous for its abundance of tea gardens.If you roam around Munnar,you will witness every inch of surrounding hills and valleys are densely covered with tea plantations.Other than lush green tea gardens, there are many other tourist attractions which one can enjoy and explore.
Where to live:
Munnar has beautiful stay options right from normal lodging, homestays and campsites to luxurious resorts and hotels. You can literally choose to stay amidst tea gardens.
We stayed at Santhi hill view resort situated at place called Anachal, which is around 17 km from main Munnar town. Located at the dead end of road in lush green spice farms from where one could see spectacular views. You can see clouds below your eyesight; green hills everywhere sitting in your cottage balcony.
This resort has limited cottages; pre -booking is a preferred option.
We booked Deluxe and premium AC rooms at 6333/- Rs per night in October 2022.
Google map location: Santhi Hill View Resorts
Best time to visit Munnar:
Munnar is a hill station that remains generally a cold place but we recommend you to visit Munnar in December as generally you combine destinations like Munnar in Kerala state with other tourist destinations which mostly remain humid. But if you are exploring only Munnar then summer and rain conditions can also be considered as a good option.
We choose the season just after the rains ,before the winter, so that the weather would be soothing and most of the waterfalls would be flowing.
How to travel:
From Kochi you can easily hire a cab towards Munnar. We had hired a cab with driver for our entire Kerala journey. Columbus tourist agency located in front of Kochi railway junction can offer you very good options for travel service.
We got a Toyota Tavera for 20000/- for 7 days including driver’s food and accommodation.
Driver name : Sabu 8590112815
Munnar tea gardens:
Munnar and the surrounding area is famous for its magnificent landscape of tea gardens.Almost all hills around Munnar town are covered by tea plantations.Munnar tea garden view point is on the way to Eravikulam national park where you can see breathtaking view of lush tea gardens along with blue colored sky in the background and curvy roads in the middle of tea plantations.Generally it is not allowed to go inside tea plantations but we managed to go and had some awesome clicks.We advise you to visit tea plantation at the outskirts of Munnar as they are less crowded and you could get privacy for videography and photography.
Other tourist places around Munnar:
Other than tea gardens there are a number of tourist places in and around Munnar.
Eravikulam national park is the habitat of an endangered species of goat called Nilgiri Thar. You can be photographed and video graphed with these cute animals.
Road from base to national park trek point is a ride to enjoy.
Website to book online tickets: https://www.eravikulamnationalpark.in/landing/axRegister.php
Entry fee:200/- Rs per person
Tea factory/Museum
We visited Ripple tea Museum to witness the actual manufacturing of tea.You can purchase various tea products at this factory.It’s recommended to visit one of the tea factory in Munnar; though our experience at this particular tea factory was not good.It’s heavily commercialized and sometimes they don’t even care to explain the procedure of tea making.
Google map location: Tea Museum
Entry fee:125/- Rs per person
Eco point photo location:
Eco point is a typical tourist location where one can enjoy boating in the backwaters of Mattupetty dam.We recommend you to take a halt at place just near eco point towards top point road. You will get one of the the best photographic location in Munnar where landscape is next to beautiful. Greenish water at base and dense forest to the other side of river bank and huge mountains behind those forest makes its beautiful and if you get clear blue sky above; it will turn no more than wallpaper for you.
Road to top point:
You can skip the top point as it is a typical tourist point and usually crowded viewpoint;but the road trip towards this place from Munnar is a must-do activity.You will find dense western ghats along this route and deserted tea gardens where you can immerse yourself in these green fields.
Ripple waterfalls:
If you want to visit one of the waterfalls near Munnar then definitely it should be a ripple waterfall.You need to trek for about 15 minutes from the parking lot to reach near this waterfall.The big USP of this waterfall is that you can experience going very near to it.
Entry fee:20/- Rs per person
There are a lot of tourist points in Munnar but we recommend you to mainly explore tea gardens.
Some other photos:
