The morning of the staff picnic began with a wakeup call at 4:30am to prepare for a prompt 6am departure to Munnar, a beautiful hill station in the Idukki district of Kerala. To the interns, an early morning with a long bus ride meant a great opportunity to catch up on some sleep after several long days of trekking and work. To the staff it meant the party could start even earlier.

Within minutes of leaving the Cardamom County parking lot, a small group of the staff was already busy preparing the music list for the day’s journey. Immediately the bus was pouring with energy- Bollywood music incited full volume singing and raucous dancing that was only made more amusing by the jostling motions of the moving bus. It provided not only a humorous and exciting start to the day but also a somehow appropriate cultural soundtrack to the beautiful mountain views, tea plantations, and villages that passed by the bus window on the way to Munnar.

Our first stop was the Eravikulam National Park in Munnar that hosts the rare and fragile montane ecosytem, home to many endangered species of plants and animals. We couldn’t have been more fortunate with the weather; the beautiful sunny day invited plenty of Nilgiri Tahr, a kind of goat, to graze the mountainside for food just inches away from us. Walking around the park also served as a wonderful opportunity to get to know some of the other members of the staff with whom we don’t regularly interact. Many staff members are similar in age and fresh out of college, so our conversations exchanged the cultural differences and pressures of being a young adult.

Following the Eravikulam National Park we enjoyed a roadside lunch of chicken biriyani and papadum. Nothing breaks barriers quite like sharing a meal together. With our hands as our utensils, we shared this incredibly spicy dish together, with multiple portions of yogurt. (It quickly became evident to us that even when we asked for spicy biriyani in the restaurant at Cardamom County, it still wasn’t as spicy as when prepared for the Indian palate.)

After lunch we boarded the bus for Mattupetty Dam where we could take a speedboat for a quick 15min tour of the area. The hillsides were covered in tall thin Eucalyptus trees anchored deep into red earth and the water was a strikingly calm steel grey. The panorama from the boat offered horizontal bands of color that satisfied my designer’s color appetite.

The music and dancing resumed on the ride home, and after a quick stop for some masala tea and cake we returned to Cardamom County, exhausted but content. The smiles at the end of the day were indication of a successful staff picnic leaving us with a gratifying feeling from a full day of successful team bonding.