The ride to outside of Munnar was only about 50km ~ 30 miles, but it was challenging coming off the ride to Marayoor and was full of climbing. Our guide Raj had to pull some strings to get us a place to stay because a filming cast and crew would not check out of our hotel. We ended up staying at The Tall Trees and it was the nicest place we have stayed so far. The rooms were part of small individual housing units that peppered a steep hill in the forest. I’ve never had to do so much walking at a hotel before — getting places took a lot of up and downhill walking.
On the way we stopped at a tea factory museum to see the tea making process. CTC means Crush, Tear, Curl and is the process used to make a lot of the tea here. The ‘gentleman’ that gave the presentation for our group and the other tourists spoke quickly and with an extremely thick accent, so I really didn’t understand him. I’m not even sure if it was all english. Anyway, I was ticked at him anyway because he basically ushered everyone around this table-ish thing and then basically shoved me out of the way to speak the group (literally, he rudely pushed me out of the way).
I got a kick out of talking to a few of the workers downstairs. One grabbed my arm and said ‘John Cena’. If you know who that is, you’ll understand why its hilarious. I guess I am bigger than normal around here. (In case you don’t know, John Cena is a modern-day Hulk Hogan — he’s a WWE wrestler. And he probably dwarfs Hulk Hogan actually.)
