One Year on Earth

After the houseboat docked (sad! We weren’t ready for the trip to end…), we climbed aboard an antique-looking Ambassador (the ubiquitous car of India) and set off on an arduous, 4 1/2-hour drive into the hills of Munnar.  Munnar plays home to a number of tea estates and spice plantations, whose greenery combines to give the whole area a Sound-of-Music-like feel that seems far removed from the general chaos of the rest of India.  During their imperial days, the British used to come here to escape the heat, and with good reason: the higher the Ambassador climbed, the more the temperature dropped.  

Although we didn’t have much time to spend in Munnar (the Andaman Islands were calling our name), we were able to visit a tea museum, where we got a brief lesson on the art of tea production.  We also stopped to watch a group of women harvesting tea leaves; waist-deep in the impossibly green and manicured tea trees, they gave us a new appreciation for all of the hard work that goes into creating our cups of Lipton.