Munnar

Once we got far enough away from Cochin, we started to get glimpses of fog-covered mountains and lazy rivers. These were the same images that caught our attention in the National Geographic magazine article that persuaded us to arrange this trip to Kerala.

It was well after dark before we finally reached Munnar. This worked out really well since we were totally surprised by the view that surrounded us when we woke up the next morning.

Munnar is essentially a hill station that developed during India’s colonial period when the British established tea plantations here. The tea plants, which actually form waist-high hedges, make Munnar’s hills bright green with a look as if someone ran a comb over them. We stopped at a tea museum, which had a running factory inside it, to see how tea is transformed from a green and decidedly non-tea-scented leaf into an oxidized, brown ball that represents the finest CTC (curled, torn and crushed) black tea. However, the most amazing step in the whole process occurs before the tea even reaches the processing plant. Plantation workers, typically women, scale the steep slopes to trim the endless rows tea plants (tea plants are one of the few crops in India that produce a product year-round). The women wear a thick rubber tarp like a skirt to protect their legs from the hedges and don’t seem fazed by the fact that their job seems more like rock climbing than agricultural labor.

After traveling to a number of scenic viewpoints, we ended our day by taking in a very small-scale Kathakali production. Kathakali is the main form of dance in the south of India, and it is marked by incredibly intricate costumes and equally intricate movements (all of which have very specific meanings). The show started at 6:30, but we arrived early to see the performers go through makeup and the setup of their costumes. The makeup is a thick face paint that completely covers the performers’ faces. The costumes take forever to put on, and I got to thinking that the costume was more complicated than it needed to be (in the same, ignorant way that lets me wonder why sarees need to be wrapped and re-pleated each time instead of just pre-sown so they are ready to slip on). In any case, between the costumes, the cacophony of the percussion instruments and the odd, almost scary expressions of the performers, I learned that Kathakali is probably my least favorite form of entertainment.