The “Green Giant” mechanical tea harvester, one of only a few in the world, does the manual work of 500 people. Wayne’s View Photography/Courtesy of Charleston Tea Plantation
A Munnar tea estate in Kerala, India, where tea leaves are picked by hand. Photo by Milo Inman.
The two photos and their implications offer a pretty big contrast, but what they have in common is Camellia sinensis, the tea plant. Continue reading
Photo credits: Jossmon
Top Station, named for being the railway station with the highest elevation in the area, is one of the main attractions in Munnar. It is about 24 km from the town, and the view from Top Station provides us with a stunning bird’s eye view of Tamil Nadu, our neighboring state to the east. Continue reading
The Idukki district of Kerala is known for mystical mists.
The lake Mattupetty, created by a hydroelectric dam only 13 kilometers from one of the Western Ghats’ most visited hill stations – Munnar.
We’ve lived in India a year now (more on that in another post) and for much of this time I’ve wanted to visit Munnar, the iconic tea-laden hill station in the Western Ghats. Most of our mountain excursions have been to Thekkady, a place we’ve grown to love for its proximity to the Periyar Tiger Reserve, and the team we work with at Cardamom County.
This weekend we had the best reason for a change of route–to scout a prospective organic farm that might join our portfolio of properties under management–so I was looking forward to also discovering the differences between these two hill stations. I did in fact find something different in Munnar, but not in the way I was expecting it. Continue reading
Organikos 