Hill Station

Munnar is a hill station that is about 4 hours away from Kochi – and it seems REALLY popular around Christmas time, especially with other domestic tourists. I have seen some foreigners, but the majority of people here are Indian.

Nature

One of the top reasons to visit Munnar is to see nature. It’s very hilly up here and there are lots of tea plantations. On the way to Munnar you can stop and see waterfalls as well as quite elaborate bridges that were constructed by the British a long time ago.

Tea

Since there are so many tea plantations here I wanted to go and see a working factory. One of the best bets seems to be to go to the TATA Tea Museum. It has a small working factory at the back and a short film talking about the history of Munnar and how tea plantations started here.

Of course after the tea museum I had to buy some tea to take back home. You can buy either loose tea or tea bags and they also have a choice of black or green tea.

Hiking

One of the other things that I love about hilly areas is the opportunity to go trekking. Since the tea plantations are private property, to go trekking you need a guide. It may be a bit of a cash grab but that seems to be the way it is around here. You can find day hikes and multi-day hikes.

There was a bit of low cloud, but it was still a great hike to walk among the tea plantations and up the side of one of the mountains.

Arrival

You can get to Kerala by train if you want to. You can get anywhere in India by train – but it will take a long time. It is scheduled as 3 days from New Delhi which I thought was a long time to spend on a train. So I decided to fly. I flew with IndiGo

6E

As airline codes go IndiGo has got a good one. I am not sure if they are allocated or requested but they use it as a play on words. If you speak “6 – E” then it sounds like “sexy” and they make use of this all over their literature. All their signs say “Hello 6E…”. I think their advertising is quite good and their onboard service was really good for a discount airline. You get water for free, however you do have to pay for food and coffee. The prices are very reasonable though.

Fort Kochi

Fort Kochi is a good hour from the airport if you take a car and a driver. Although it is quite far, all the things that you will want to see are here so I decided to stay in the Fort. I find this location to be quite relaxing with most people here having a laid back and relaxed lifestyle. Compared to New Delhi it could almost be a different country. There is little pollution and not very much traffic. People are friendly and prices are cheaper.

Chinese Fishing Nets

Some people in Kochi still do an old style of fishing where they dip huge nets into the water and then withdraw them later on. Apparently this is the only instance of this Chinese fishing technique used outside of China.

You can buy the fish directly from the fisherman here and you can take it to a little cafe on the beach and they will cook it for you.

Christmas

Since Kerala has a Christian population you certainly see more signs of Christmas around here than you do in the north. Some of the churches go to great lengths here to put up huge stars and Christmas lights.

How to get there

Amer Fort is located North of Jaipur and is quite large in size. By the time I got to Jaipur I was thinking that maybe I had seen one too many forts, but I had a free afternoon after arriving so I went up to take a look. It’s nice to see the old city wall that stretches out from the fort. It almost reminds you of the Great Wall Of China.

It’s about 40 minutes North of city centre. Although you will go a lot of auto drivers that want to take you in their tuk-tuks, form a comfort point of view I would suggest that you take a car. I rented an Ola and they waited for me as I visited.

It’s very slow getting out of Jaipur city centre since there is a lot of traffic so I would suggest you budget extra time for this. The fort is open till sunset and I got some pretty good views close to sunset time.

Audio Guide

You can rent an audio guide for Rp./200 and it worked out quite well. You can then just follow along with the numbers and wonder around the fort. In my opinion this beats a real guide because the audio guide will not get commission to take you to a shop to buy jewelry.

Safety

You can climb up quite high and it gives you some good views of the surrounding countryside. However, please be careful as some of the railings are hanging on my a thread and I would not use them for support.

Sound and Light show

Apparently in the evening they have a sound and light show, but I did not stay that late. It is viewed from a parking lot close by and it does get good reviews.