Munnar and Thekkady

Everyone at the office told me to visit Munnar and Thekkady before I leave India. Everyone had great things to say about the area, and G.O.C. was able to set something up for me during the Christmas holidays.

Munnar was my first stop, and the first thing I noticed was that we were steadily climbing in elevation for over 2 hours from Kochi. There were a few waterfall stops along the way to Munnar.

 

We continued to climb in elevation for another hour until we reached Munnar which is known for it's vast tea plantations started during the British rule of India. Here is a link with some more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munnar

Our first stop in Munnar was a visit to a tea making plant and museum. This was a guided tour of the plant where they showed how the tea is processed. In the first pic, tea leaves are placed in a bin on top of a grate. Under the grate is spacious area for hot air to blow, and this dries out the leaves. After that, the leaves are processed in a number of different ways to get different tasting tea - rolled, ground, stripped etc...The key to taste is the size of the leaf particle. The smaller the particle the more oxidation occurs, and thus the taste will be stronger or weaker. In the second pic tea is running through plates to ground the tea leaves. The end product is placed in a furnace, and then the leaf particles are sorted through screens to get 6 different types of tea in this plant. When the tea does not go through the furnace, green tea particles are the result, and that is how Green Tea is made.

 

This was the view just outside the museum. The museum had a number of articles from old furniture and clocks from previous British owner of the plantation to a tea tasting area with plaques describing the history of tea and the planation.

 

After the tea museum, I went to a well known wildlife park in the upper peaks of the Munnar mountains. There was a 4 kilometer bus trip through a tea plantation, and then a 1 kilometer hike to the top of the look out area.

 

There is abundant wildlife in the area. At night, I was told there are Tigers that roam around, and the park is completely shut down during this time because it is very dangerous. But during the day, tourist are allowed to hike to the look out point. There were a few flowers out, but what got the attention of everyone was the mountain goats.

 

Once the hike was over, I headed toward my hotel for the night, which was on the other side of the valley.

 

I stayed at the Siena Resort, and it was a nice place. They had lights and a Christmas festival for all the guests. We all ate dinner and watched the show. When the sun went down, it cooled off nicely. I have been told that during winter it can get to freezing occasionally, but tonight it was only a little brisk.

 

One thing I noticed was that there was carpet on the floor instead of tile. Because of the cooler weather, carpet was put down to keep your feet warm - nobody likes stepping on cold tile with bare feet.

Here is a shot of the Christmas lights at the resort.

 

After a good night sleep, I was able to get up early to see the sunrise over Munnar.

 

In the morning, we continue to see some great views as we headed for a dam in Munnar which created a large lake system.

 

Here is a pic from the dam.

 

Here is a pic of the dam and tea plants near the lake.

 

At this point, a very light and cool breeze was blowing. It was really hard to leave this area, but I had to move on to my next destination - the wildlife sanctuary in Thekkady.

Along the way, we had to wait for about 30 minutes as a bus got stuck in a ditch which blocked the road. Everyone was out watching the tow truck try to pull the bus out. It appeared that many men who were standing around watching, thought they knew more about what should be done than the tow truck crew. I also noticed some interesting flowers in the area.

 

While driving to Thekkady, the temperature became warmer and milder, but not hot. I also noticed lots of spice farms for many kilometers. A local told me that the temperature in Thekkady is mild all year long, and it makes for a great place to grow coffee, pepper, and cardamom.

 After a 3 hour drive, I arrived in Thekkady, and I stopped at the Elephant Jungle park. There was a new baby elephant that was born, and it was only 8 days old. Here is a pic of the mom and the baby.

 

There were some kids watching the elephant, and they wanted me to take their picture. I'm not sure why local kids enjoy having their pictures taken by foreigners.

 

They also had an elephant ride, and my taxi driver would not let me leave the park until he saw me on top of an elephant. I blogged about ridding an elephant in Kodanad, but this elephant was  a bull elephant with large tusks, it was even bigger the other elephant I rode. After the ride I thanked the elephant, and his response was a puff of air from its long trunk. I assumed the puff of air meant "you are welcome"  or "no problem, this is how I get fed without having to fix my own dinner."

 

The next stop was a boat ride around Periyar Wildlife preserve.

 

Here we saw a number of different types of birds like the KingFisher. We also saw Sambar deer, wild boar, black lemur, and some wild elephants. We were far enough away, that getting a good picture was difficult, but we could see them getting water at the lake edges.

I then went to the Arany Nivas Hotel, which is located within the wildlife preserve. There were monkeys in the trees and some wild animal sounds going on during the night.

 

The next morning I went to the Periyar Tiger Reserve Tribal Heritage area which has the oldest indigenous group in the area. The people are called Mannan. Here is a link with some background info on these people.

http://www.yearoutindia.com/mannan_tribal_houses.htm

I was guided through the village, and I was graciously served a snack of coconut, brown sugar and rice. I talked to the tribal chief during brunch who asked the typical questions of where I was from, why I was in India, and what I thought of the village. Her e is one of the village houses which is made out of bamboo and mud.

 

There is also a museum made out of bamboo that has different artifacts and pictures that represent the daily life and rituals of these indigenous people. The village had about 36 families. Each family had their own plot of land from which they grew coffee, pepper, cardamom, and other spices and foods which they sell at the local market. The guide told me that in the past, villagers would only get 50 percent market value for there goods. This changed when the government decided to buy their goods at normal market prices to create a fairer system.

The guide also gave me a few lessons on when and how to pick some of these spices. Pepper can be black, green, red or white even though the pepper plant is the same plant. Cardamom is picked when darker green - this would be for green cardamom.

After saying goodbye to the villagers, I started my ride back to Kochi. There were a couple of old churches that deserved to have their picture taken.

 

When I showed the taxi driver my pics, he seemed to like this one:

 

One thing that struck me on my weekend journey, other than the beauty of Munnar and Thekkady, was the diversity from Kochi to Munnar to Thekkady. The environment changes from warm beaches, to cool tea plantations, to mild spice farms. It was a great holiday weekend. My co-workers have mentioned a few other places I need to visit, and I'm going to try and see those soon.

Kodanad

Jonathan Russ, one of my co-workers in the U.S.A. decided to taste India for a month along with his family (his wife Ann and daughter Lexi).  It appears they had been following my blog, and then decided to come to India because Lexi wanted to see baby elephants, Ann wanted to see Lexi see baby elephants, and Jonathan wanted to taste the spicy food.  If someone wants to see baby elephants and eat spicy food, India is a great place to visit.

I talked with G.O.C. , and we setup a local trip to help them reach their goals. Our First stop was at Paniyeli Poru park. Here is a link:

http://www.hindu.com/mp/2006/02/06/stories/2006020601150300.htm

 

When we arrived at the park, we took two guides on the 4 kilometer hike. We really didn't know what to expect as it was our first time. After about one kilometer we reached the banks of the river.

 

We continued along the path to find some nice flowers and interesting formations.

 

We then found ourselves pulling up our pant legs to our knees as we walked across numerous pools and streams about 3 kilometers into the trip. The water was very cool and refreshing. Lexi, who is four years old, played and splashed in the water along with the female guide. The male guide would scout ahead looking for safe way to cross the next stream.

 

At the end of the hike we reached the final destination Paniyeli Poru. It was a great place to picnic.

 

Here are some stitched shots which show the beauty and expanse of the area.

 

 

 

Of course, Paniyeli Poru is not a baby elephant, but Jonathan and his family were enjoying the natural environment. After a while, we headed back on a different path - once again crossing streams and pools. It was a great hike, and a lot of fun. When we got back to the parking lot, our driver was having lunch at a local store, and so we went with the flow. Our female guide dropped us off at a small shop nearby, and we relaxed to tea and  fryed bananas as a energy boosting lunch time snack.

Once lunch time was over, we headed to the main attraction of the day - baby elephants in Kodanad where there is an elephant care center. The care center treats lost and found elephants, attempts to get them healthy, and perhaps put them back in the wild if possible. Here is a link about a baby elphant that was rescued:

http://www.newkerala.com/news3.php?action=fullnews&id=19231

 

Here is a baby and juvenile elephant at the care center.  There was a very small baby elephant in a protected area that we were able to get a glimpse of and everyone thought it was very very cute.

 

This elephant was drinking and taking a bath. The other elephants were also led to this area one at a time for some cool drinks and a quick bath.

 

I was surprised to find out that there was also a zoo at the care center. Here are only a few of the animals at the zoo.

This is a boa snake and a crocodile.

 

These are some spotted deer. Other animals at the zoo were monkeys, parrots, assorted birds, eagles, giant squirrel, owl, and others.

 

The next surprise came when we were told we could ride an elephant. Everyone thought this would be a great adventure except Jonathan who preferred to take the pics of his wife and kid riding an elephant. So, I got on first, and then Lexi and Ann went behind me while Jonathan took these pics.

 

It was an amazing experience. The massive muscles flexed and rippled moving us from side to side with no effort at all. The hairs on the backside of the elephant were fairly stiff, and they easily poked through the light materials worn by Ann and Lexi - much to my amusement.  It was a wonderous animal, and we thanked her (it was a female elephant) for giving us the ride.

For those who follow this blog, you may remember another blog post about this same care center. Savi and his wife visited the area a while back, and you can find more pics from that post. Here is the link:

http://www.therhogue.com/blog/2006/10/picnic.html

 

At this moment, you might think the adventure would be over, but only about an hour away was Cherai Beach. We estimated that we could get to the beach just before sunset, and we pushed on to the beach.

Along the way, we saw some local fisherman who were diving into the water to catch fish. On the other side was a Chinese fishing net that was hauling out the catch of the day.

 

We had about an hour to spare before sunset, and we watched people gather for another lovely sunset on a sandy beach in  India.

 

Overall, Jonathan, Ann, Lexi and I had a great and memorable day in India. I'm sure one of many to come.

Company Meeting

I've been working with the IdentityMine India team for over 7 months now, and I was invited to their executive summit meeting where they discuss the higher level workings within the organization. It is one of the most important meetings of the year, and the entire companies future plans are determined at this meeting. I was very surprised to be invited to such an important event in the companies history, and of course I accepted the invitation.

Because of all the busy schedules of all the executives, it is very difficult to get everyone together in the same place. I was told that the easiest meeting place for executives to gather was on boats. I found that a little strange, but later I noticed it was happening everywhere.

Here is the boat we were scheduled to meet on:

 

After all the executives arrived, we started to travel down the backwater areas. I was told that this type of environment was to allow executives the creative freedom to assist in creating the corporate future of the company.

 

The first thing I noticed was that there were a lot of people I had never seen before. I guess these executives where in other offices stationed around India. many of the executives were new to IdentityMine, and I classified them as young executives. Here are some of the young executives in action. They brought a lot of creativity and energy to the discussions, but it was obvious to me they lacked the overall business savvy that the older executives had acquired from years of hard work.

 

The meeting was about to get started when we all noticed other executive summit meetings were going on. This one was for a movie studio, and they decided to have there meeting in the water. While other people were having them on sailboats.

 

One of the execs brought up a point of order in the meeting, that perhaps there was a better way to have the executive summit meeting. Were these other companies trying to leap frog into new areas of meeting places? Could these new meeting places spur more creative ideas which would make them more profitable? These question s became the subject of debate.

 

I noticed a smaller executive summit meeting near us, and they appeared to be debating the same issue.

 

At this point, everyone was a bit perplexed on what to do.

 

Regi, the head executive made the bold decision to break off into different groups to research the prospects of whether a new meeting should take place in the water, on a sailboat or elsewhere. All the executives thought this was  a great idea, and groups were formed.

Before the debates began, everyone took time out for lunch to get some energy for the important work ahead.

 

After lunch, the groups got together, and started to research the prospects of the validity of the current summit meeting place.

Franklin and Regi  discussing the area of meeting in the water.

 

Other executives discussing having the meeting on a sailboat.

 

More executives debating having the meeting on a fishing boat.

 

Another executive reading "Where to have your Executive Summit to make more profit".

 

The stress of the event got to this executive. He started yelling about having the meeting in the air, and then yelling, "I can fly. I can fly".

 

Other executives in the group had to pull him back into the boat. It was obvious to me that executives lead very stressful lives, and I was glad to not be one.

 

This group of executives debate having the meeting on a Chinese fishing net. It appears a smaller company of execs are also looking into the same idea.

 

This group of executives debate having the meeting on top of poles, as the birds seemed to doing that too.

 

Some of the execs talked to the captain of the boat for some ideas. His suggestion was to have the meeting on a small boat. A number of the executives thought that was a good idea as it would create the need for coordinated teamwork. So, the captain asked for a small boat to come, and they all got into the boat.

 

At that point, one of the executives saw something that changed the entire debate.

 

It appeared that one of IdentityMine's competitors was having an executive summit meeting on a cruise ship. Regi decided all the executives had gathered enough information, and it was time to gather all the information to come up with a plan. The boat stopped at Bolgatty Palace and dinner was served.

 

After the meal, everyone gathered to come up with a final assessment for the validity of the meeting.

 

This meeting was confidential, and I was not allowed to participate. So, I didn't find out what happened until the next day when I asked one of the young executives about the executive meeting minutes. They told me the executive summit meeting was declared a success because the "Cruise Ship" format of the meeting was declared the best over other ideas like "Sailboats, floating in the water, fishing boats,  Chinese Nets,  traditional boats,   or on top of poles".

When I asked if any future plans had been created for the future of IdentityMine India, I was told those plans had been postponed to another executive summit meeting on a "Cruise Ship".

I'm not really smart enough to understand the intricate working of the executive mind. So, I didn't question the results of the IdentityMine India executive summit meeting.

I did get some nice pics while all the executives were working hard on the validity of their existence: