Munnar Tea Plantations & Flower Gardens on the Road to Mattupetty

On our second day in Munnar, India, Basil at Le Celestium Hotel arranged a tour along the road from Munnar to Mattupetty. We thoroughly enjoyed the scenery, especially the Munnar Tea Plantations.

Our driver wasn’t much of a tour guide, but he was safe and affordable. We paid $20 for the 7 hours he spent driving us toward Mattupetty and back to Munnar.

Since our driver didn’t provide us with any facts or information about the places we visited, we didn’t have much to share in our video and I’m guessing some of the things we said were inaccurate. We apologize for that and welcome all corrections.

Also, on the brochure for this tour, it was called the “Madupetty Direction.” However, according to the interwebs, it’s actually spelled Mattupetty. Which is correct? ?‍♂️

Celebrity Photo Op

Before we left on our tour, a large family who was staying at our hotel asked us to pose with them for photos. This happened to us a lot in India. Random people on the street stopped us for pictures with them. We’re not exactly sure why. Is it because we’re gringos? Americans? We were flattered, of course, and were happy to pose for pictures. One of the family members was kind enough to take pictures with my camera, too.

KFDC Floriculture Centre – Munnar, India

Our first stop was the Forest Flower Garden at the KFDC Floriculture Centre just east of Munnar. We saw lots of strange and familiar flowers there, including the same vine with orange blooms that we have in our courtyard in Cuenca, Ecuador.

Jungle Honey Bee Tree

Most of the stops on this tour were only a couple kilometers apart. On our way from the flower garden to the botanical garden, we stopped for a photo op with some honey bees. We’ve never seen Winnie the Pooh style bee hives before. Pooh would be very happy ?

Carmelgiri Botanical Garden

Our next stop was another flower garden of sorts, the Carmelgiri Botanical Garden. They had lots of very strange looking plants there, including this one from The Little Shop of Horrors ?

Mattupetty Dam – Mattupetty India

Our next stop was the Mattupetty Dam and Lake. We actually didn’t stop at the dam because it was hot and there were a lot of people. Besides, we’ve seen lots of dams and it was a pretty typical one. We drove around the lake to the boating area and our driver stopped so we could look around.

Kundale Lake – Mattupetty India

After a short drive through the beautiful countryside between Munnar and Mattupetty, we stopped at Kundale Lake. It’s also spelled Kundala Lake and Kundla Lake. We noticed this a lot in India: the same place has multiple names.

After we left Kundale Lake and were driving toward the tea plantations, we saw another troop of monkeys. Their behaviors are so humanlike, or are our behaviors monkeylike? ?

Vegetable Garden View – Mattupetty India

We stopped for a scenic view of an organic vegetable farm. Seeing the people working in the gardens below was like looking through a window in time. It was unreal.

Munnar Tea Plantations – Top Station View

Our last stop was by far the best along the road from Munnar to Mattupetty. We had seen lots of Munnar tea plantations from the road, but we hadn’t walked around in one yet. On this stop, we enjoyed two short hikes through the tea bushes.

Flooding and Mudslides in Kerala

During monsoon season in 2018, Kerala and especially Munnar suffered greatly from the excessive rainfall. We were told that there is normally a slow steady rain day and night during the monsoon season, but last year, it was a torrential downpour day and night for more than 2 months.

All that extra water caused lots of flooding and mudslides, which destroyed roads, bridges and houses. The city of Munnar and many other cities ran out of staples like rice and tapioca, as well as packaged foods, due to the washed out roads. Tourism is still very low in the popular tourist town because of the bad road conditions.

Munnar Liquor Store

Our driver was kind enough to stop by the one and only liquor store in Munnar that’s run by the government. We were told that sometimes the line is half a kilometer long to buy alcohol.

Lunch at Alibaba & 41 Dishes – Munnar India

We took Paul and Patrick to Alibaba & 41 Dishes for lunch after our road trip. Our diver ate lunch at a roadside stand while we waited for him, but there weren’t any gringo oriented restaurants on the road to and from Mattupetty. The tour took 7 hours so we were really hungry when we got back to Munnar.

I didn’t take any food pictures, but these flowers were outside the restaurant.

Other videos in this series: Kerala India 2019

Watch Our Video About the Tea Plantations of Kerala India

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JP Stonestreet

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Hola todos! Welcome to my author bio page! Let's see. Where to begin... I grew up in the country on a lake outside a small Kansas farm town. As soon as I could, I got the hell outta there! Since then, I've lived and/or worked in Kansas City, Washington D.C., Denver, San Francisco, and Ecuador. I started and sold a dotcom, wrote a book about it, started a YouTube channel, and now I write a lot. Amelia and I have embraced the Unconventional Life and we want to help you do it, too!