Echo point

Day 5 – Part 1:

Mr.Bee and I woke up early in the morning, sat across each other in the balcony, looking at the huge trees of various kinds. The only one I could recognise was that of Eucalyptus. I saw a beautiful red nosed green parrot on the trees and that made my day. (I remember seeing a green parrot in Rajamundry, during my stay at my dodda’s place.)

I woke the kids up and after our baths, we went to have our breakfast downstairs. We met fellow Telugu tourists, chatted with them and parted ways. (Wherever you go, Kerala, Kashmir, Kashi or Kanyakumari, anywhere in India, you will find at least one Telugu tourist! That’s my personal experience talking.)

The kids and I didn’t like eating anything, except for plain old bread and jam. Mr.Bee is surprisingly a non-picky eatery, during travels.

After our breakfast, we decided to pass our time in the playground. I love the swings, it brings back memories of my school days and all. GBee loves playing on the swing, just like me, whereas KBee hates it, like Mr.Bee (Mr.Bee doesn’t mind Bungee jumping, but he can’t sit even for a minute on a swing!) Since it was our anniversary, we asked GBee to take a couple of pics of us. Even though a 7 yr old does not have much experience with taking pics, GBee not only took good pics, he also suggested various poses for us to mimic!

We returned to our room and started planning for the morning and afternoon hours. Our evening plan was already in place.

N, our tour driver suggested the Greenland Spices and Ayurvedic Garden tour. I was like, why not!

We booked ourselves a garden guide, who would show each tree and plant and explain the finer points. She knew Telugu too and it was fun, listening to Telugu in a Malayalam accent and I didn’t mind it a bit.

Red Ginger Lily

Princess Flower Plant

Red Banana plant

Cardamom plant with Inch Plant at its feet

If you wonder how a cardamom looks before being Sun dried, then, this is how it looks….

Queen Bee holding a cardamom, with KBee in the background playing with seeds and what not!

We had a blast, looking at all the plants of Aswagandha, Brahmi, Bringaraj, cocoa, Punarnava plant, red ivy (used to heal wounds) etc. She even showed us plants and the combination of which is used as medication for different health issues. It was an informative tour. (Since I was worried about presence of snakes in the Spice Garden, she assured me that one particular plant repels snakes, the Sarpagandha)

With that, we returned to the car, ready to go to our next destination, Munnar Rose Garden. Once again, we saw many colourful flowering plants and other garden plants, which were cut in interesting shapes and looked ornamental. (GBee and KBee wondered why we were looking at so many plants in a single day!)

My overly enthusiastic (pun intended) chocolate muffins, enjoying their time @ Munnar Rose Garden

We took atleast two dozen pics, spent close to 45 minutes in the garden and got into the car.

Our next stop was the Echo Point, Munnar.

Echo Point – Munnar

We paid the entry fee, stood there at the end of the tiny mound of a hill and shouted out, to hear the echo which boomeranged at us from among the trees, on the opposite side. There was boating option available too, for those interested. If you want to attract the full force of the Sun, boating is the way to go!!

Incidentally, we were yet to eat our lunch and extremely tired from all the walking. We returned to the car, after buying beautiful soveneirs, a.k.a, the fridge magnets and some wooden figurines.

We had originally planned on paying a visit to the Idukki dam, but later shelved the idea. We stuffed ourselves with all the snacks available at various locations.

While N drove us back to the Munnar town, all the 4 of us had a power nap. We woke up refreshed and happy, as we reached the White House hotel.

Since it was well past our lunch time, we ordered snacks and juice and patiently waited for our room service to make their appearance!

To follow our schedule, we had to be out of the room by 4:30 p.m., so we got busy, by getting ready for our interesting evening. The Raga, here we come!

P.S:

1. Long ago, I saw snow white cockatoos in Sydney, not in a zoo, but in the balcony of an apartment and more of them on the streets, where they fly freely!

2. After visiting the spices garden I understood why the spices are costly. The process of picking them and making them usable is a time taking process which takes lots of patience. Even plucking them from the tree needs to be done carefully and requires expertise.

3. We also stopped at a random point on the road, near the tea and coffee estates, saw a couple of deers running about.

4. Dodda amma is a Telugu term used to refer to one’s maternal aunt, older sibling of mom. Pinni is an aunt, who is younger sibling of mom.

5. During our visit to the nursery in Sangareddy district, the admin told us there are snakes and to be cautious when coming with kids. Luckily, Munnar Spice Garden administration knows what they are doing, since they have Sarpagandha too!

6. All the photos except the one showing the Echo Point were taken by Mr.Bee. This post is of the travel series, previous one being Munnar, at last!

Day 3 – Part 1:

I woke up early, (thanks to the church bells in Kodaikanal) decided on what clothes all the four of us need to wear and waited patiently for more than an hour, before waking up the sleepy trio, the boys.

After the kids were ready, they played in the open area outside our room, which was as slopy as a park slide. I warned them against going far away, since it was hilly and I was sure there were rattle snakes in the area. (The rattling sound I heard at regular intervals among mounds covered with grass might have been anything, but better safe than sorry) KBee found some tissues, made a paper ball with it. They rolled the paper ball downhill, taking turns and had fun. I spent the time recording their activities.

We had our breakfast at the hotel itself. I had bread and jam. Kids had dosa, because they are part of the Dosa Fan Club! Mr.Bee had milk bread with coffee. We got into our ‘car for the week’, ertigo and off we went in the cool breeze!

Our first stop was Fairy Waterfalls. It had a small flow of water, it being summer and all. We had to park the car somewhere nearby, go through a gate, (as if entering private property) to access the waterfalls. It was peaceful place, only two other people were admiring the nature and sadly we saw plastic bottles inside the lake too. Some idiots never learn!

Summer Special – itsy bitsy, Fairy Waterfalls!

See the pale rainbow at the bottom of the waterfalls? We were mesmerised looking at it. As we were enjoying the moment in nature, we heard a horse neighing violently. I don’t know about the kids, but that scared me. We found a white horse ahead and it was jumping up and down, neighing repeatedly. We returned to our car after taking selfies and KBee was surprised to see a white horse. He only saw dark horses in T.V, white horse was a novelty.

Later, we went to the Echo point. To reach the point, we have to go through an enclosed pathway, with 100 something stalls of chocolates, bags, soveneirs on either side of it . It’s like entering a tunnel of goodies! It was congested with human traffic and we walked at a medium pace, to let KBee catch up. Thanks to the heavy mist that day, we couldn’t see the valley properly. We spent hardly 10 minutes at the point and returned to our car. We also met a group of school going girls who had a boom box with them and they played some songs while dancing and shouting all the way to the echo point. At last, I could catch one song, “peelings” song from Pushpa2.

Our next stop was Pillar Rock Flower Garden. Here too, we waited a while for the mist to clear so that we could look at the beautiful Pillar Rocks. We had a brief glimpse of the magnificent Pillar Rocks, took a few selfies and exited.

Pillar Rocks are not visible in the background because of the heavy mist

We made a brief stop here for our snacks, which were salted raw mango, boiled kabuli chana chat, fruit salad and rose flavoured soda. (lemon soda was unavailable!) I also bought Kodai Apples for our snack, for later in the room.

At every viewpoint, we had parking issues, so our driver N would park it far ahead and we spent most of the day, walking. Even KBee tried his best.

We reached the highlight of the day, the Guna Caves or the Devil’s Kitchen. The caves got the alternate name because the Tamil movie Guna starring Kamal Hasan had been shot here. Even the Malayalam movie Manjummel Boys was shot here which is based on a true story. The Guna caves is blocked now, thanks to people getting lost inside them. As per records, 16 people have disappeared inside the caves, in different incidents.

Anyway, you can only imagine how it felt looking at the nature, where the tree roots look magnificent than the tree itself! (I can write a whole post about this one location)

No pic can do justice to the beautiful Guna Caves – Courtesy: Google

GBee, wanted to climb to the top most point of the roots, which was more than 30m in heightfrom the pathway. There was also clay everywhere, so I warned him against it, but Mr.Bee didn’t like us stopping the kid. So both of them climbed towards the tree to the top, while KBee and I waited for them at the bottom. Interestingly, we had to run around the whole park thanks to the monkeys which kept coming to us, to sniff if we had any snacks with us. At one point, I threw a cookie away, to divert the d*** monkey. Later I also threw away a half eaten guava! (We thought we had fooled the monkeys, because we hid our snacks, but they still managed to find us, out of all the hundreds of tourists!)

Monkey Menace!

Since it was a weekend, the people at each tourist spot were in hundreds! What did we do next…? Read the ‘part 2’ post, which will be up soon.

P.S:

1. During the peak season, we will have to register our car or cab or any vehicle beforehand. They allow only fixed number of vehicles.

2. By the time we reached Guna Caves it was hardly time for lunch, but the climate was very cold. We bought the kids cute ear muffs at the Pillar Rocks Flower Garden, to keep the cool air out of their ears. There are also many YouTube videos which show the Guna Caves and feel free to watch them.

3. When travelling, it is better to always keep snacks and fruits handy to avoid hunger pangs. That’s what we did. We had cookies and guava at Guna Caves. We would have prefered eating away from the keen eyes of the monkeys, but the driver N banned us from eating anything inside the car. He kept warning the kids to remove the shoes as soon as we entered the car. He had his reasons.

Till the next post, Cheerio!!

Tag: Echo point

Spice Garden and Rose Garden : c/o Munnar

The Devil’s Kitchen and more

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