Recollections of my trip to Munnar

I believe it was somewhere in the last week of July, it struck our minds why not we make a trip during three days holidays during the independence day (a long week end) to make ourselves away from the regular routine work. Moreover it was a long treat pending from our project manager who recently was promoted to Group Project Manager. She readily agreed on this plan. Immediately people started coming up with different views on the place to chose as there were around 50 people in our project so we had around 10 to 15 different choices and then we finally decided it should be none other Munnar a place meant for Scenic beauty.

But we started hearing from different sources that there were frequent land slides due to the seasonal rainfall at Munnar and buses were finding it difficult to climb up the hills of Munnar.So we started revisiting our decision, but finally we all decided to take up the risk as this was the right season to visit. Unfortunately, we could not take up trains as the trains were already full as it was a long week end and our plans of going to Madurai and Alwaye totally came down. We started looking out for buses as totally 35 people agreed to come. Almost after two days we some how managed to get a bus to travel to Munnar.Everything was well planned and we booked 11 rooms in a resort at Munnar.All this were completed within first few days of August.


Everyone was eagerly waiting for the day. We planned to start by 12th August by 4'0 Clock. Everyone was asked to bring their bags ready to office by 12th Morning so that we can start from office directly. In the afternoon you could almost see 35 bags waiting near the security eagerly waiting for their turn to get into the buses.. But we could not start by 4'0 clock. It got delayed by more than a hour. We all got into buses by 5 with all our Luggages.Buses started moving and almost it took more than one hour to get out of the city as there was a heavy traffic as usual at Chennai.We carried food packets from Swami's cafe(A famous hotel near Arivalayam Signal) for our night dinner. It was a full of fun in bus...Making fun out of others, Anthakshari, DumbCharades and what not. It seemed as if it was a college final year tour...Luckily, I got the experience of a college tour right here as I missed out this during my college days and
really felt bad about missing such an experience in college.


Our Plan was to reach Munnar by 8'0 clock in the morning....Has always a college student planning to finish his preparations within study holidays and a software engineer planning to return home by 6'0 clock daily worked out? But if everything works out as per plan, then nothing can fail in this world. We reached theni around 5.30 in the morning. Bus drivers enquired about the road conditions of Munnar and decided to take up the route through Kumili(Border of Tamilnadu and Kerala) and thekkadi. Munnar was 106 km away from Kumili.But it took us more than 5 hours to cover this distance as the roads were very narrow that buses find it difficult to go. Resort had arranged breakfast for us which later was served as lunch for us as we reached the resort around 2'0 clock in the afternoon. Even though it took more than 6 hrs we could enjoy the scenic beauty...It was appearing as though we were traveling into the clouds.


The resort was actually located in the route of Cochin to Munnar.So we had to travel 20 Kms away from Munnar to reach the resort. As it was very difficult to take up the buses to visit the different places in Munnar, we decided to leave the bus at resort and engaged 4 Jeeps to take us to different places in Munnar.




Day1-13/8/2005
Rain started...Climate was really good. We could not find a single fan in resort as the climate used to be very cool always. We had our bath and got ready within an hour to go out. We had our brunch..(Lunch instead of Breakfast)...We were served with Chappathi's, Veg Kurma, Chicken 65, Egg, Rice, Appalam, Sambar. It was buffet lunch. We could not have anything in the morning as we were travelling around hills..So it appeared really delicious..To start with, we decided to go to falls.It was amazing...Density of water was high..As we moved from a place where we dont have water to the place having surplus water it appeared to be truly awesome...People advised us not to take bath there as the pressure was high..So we decided not to take bath there...Place was fully filled with flashes from the cameras carried by us.We spent some where around 40 mins there.Then we proceeded towards a place called "View Point" which is at a higher altitude...We all had a chance to taste the masala tea of Munnar...Hey i forgot to mention one thing...Munnar is also famous for spices and everywhere you can find tea estates mostly acquired by Tata Group. After covering these two places as well shopping, Jeeps started to march towards the Resort where we had planned for our dinner as well camp fire..After all these fun filled evening, most of them went to their beds as we had plans of starting early in the next morning.. and some were watching tv.


Day2-14/8/2005
Slowly people started getting up...It was heavily raining.After having their morning showers people started assembling in the dining hall for breakfast..In the next day we visited Dam,Rajamalai Falls and Echo point...Each and every place was no less to others...It will be evident from the photos that was taken at Munnar...Probably i will send out the photos taken at Munnar to you all within a weeks time..We returned back to resort around 2.30 in the afternoon.We had our lunch and bid adieu to resort and started our journey from Munnar back to Chennai around 5.30 in the evening.It was 11.30 when we got down from the hills...We had our dinner at Kumili..We had parotta,Omlette...It reminded me of my college days... Throughout the trip it was filled with songs,dance...It was very similar to college trip.. We reached Chennai on Independance day around 10.30 in the morning...

Thus an eventful journey comes to a pleasant end!!!