Munnar

Elephant washing

Elephants and their drivers

The elephants are completely blissed out with the scrubbing

Tea plantations for as far as you can see

Tea pickers- each bag weighs 10 kilos (over 20 pounds) - they fill 5 bags each day

View from the balcony at our guesthouse

The obligatory shot of Mike buying beer

We took a trip up to the hill station of Munnar which is located in the Western Ghats- the range of mountains that goes from north of Mumbai to the southern tip of India. The road distance from Fort Cochin to Munnar is only about 130km (80 miles)  but it takes about 5 hours of travel time. Switchback roads going from sea level to about 7000 feet. Initially we thought we might take a bus but very wisely hired a car and drove up with our wonderful guide Augustine in a very elegant car called an Ambassador (more on that later from Mike.)
We stopped on the way to see an elephant washing. There are a lot of temple elephants that I guess are used in religious ceremonies at certain temples. Apparently these elephants can only cool down by getting in the water and if they get too hot they can get very cranky and the last thing you want is a hot and cranky 3 ton creature . The drivers (handlers) of these elephants will take them to a river where they scrub them vigorously with coconut husks and brushes. The elephants seem to love it- they lay in the water in a very calm and blissed out manner. I always have reservations about seeing captive elephants and worry about their treatment but these elephants seemed happy and well cared for.
From there we went to tour some spice and tea plantations. Saw the tea museum and then went to our lovely guesthouse on the side of the mountain looking over the tea plantations. It was a very quiet and relaxing place. We met some lovely folks at our delicious family style veg dinner.
Yesterday morning we did a little more sightseeing and headed back to the sea for one more night here in Fort Cochin. We'll hop on a train in a couple of hours for a 3 1/2 hour trip down to Varkala Beach. We plan on staying there for a week before heading on to the capital city of  Thiruvananthapuram which everyone calls Trivandrum (again for obvious reasons.)
We've been on the road for one month...