Munnar

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Munnar consists of two parts: Old Munnar and New Munnar. Most people stay in a hotel in Old Munnar but spend their time, when not out and about, in New Munnar where the markets, eating places and Internet cafés are located. Our hotel, Pookaka, is located in Old Munnar so we had to get a rickshaw (Rs. 15) to get to New Munnar. It is possible to walk the one kilometre distance between Old and New Munnar (we did it once), but there is a lot of traffic on the road, and in the wet season the road is soaked in clay and sand from the landsliding banks that surround the road.

Even though Old Munnar isn't that interesting it still has a nice feel to it and it looks nice on photos.
New Munnar, though bigger than Old Munnar, is a small bustling town with two ATMs, a bazaar, a food market, a useful Internet café and a few places to eat. We pretty quickly realised that only one place serves food of acceptable standard: Hotel Saravana Bhavan (unrelated to the famous Chennai restaurant chain). Actually, the food isn't just acceptable, it is very good. We ate there as often as possible during our stay in Munnar. The photo below shows a traditional Keralan Dosai served on a banana leaf with a coconut chutney, a sambhar and a vegetable mixture. These were replenished when eaten.
We only ate in two other places. On the first night we went into a pure vegetarian eating place, just like Saravana is, called Patel. Of course, we shouldn't have noticing that no one else was in there, but we thought it safe since no meat was prepared on the premises. The food was not too bad, but it was light years from the quality of Saravana. The other place we went to, for a quick lunch, was Krishna. In Rough Guide this place is described as a place where you can get “a tasty pastry or cake”. As so many times before Rough Guide is way off the mark here. Krishna's food was a perfect example of how not to cook: we tried a couple of Samosas; it was a greasy sludge of indiscernible vegetables wrapped in a greasy batter. Complete rubbish.

The problem with Munnar, as with many Indian towns, is that there aren't any places to “hang out” once you have eaten. It would be nice if it was possible to sit and have a quiet cup of coffee. It is not like nothing happens at night in Munnar; the streets are full of Indians going about there business, selling this and that, or just hanging out in groups. And overall New Munnar is a nice place; the touting is limited except for at weekends when there is an influx of Indian tourists and consequently the development of a potential market for touts.
The other problem with Munnar is that it doesn't take more than a couple of ours to explore the town. The real reason for going to Munnar is the amazing nature outside Munnar Town. We spent most of our time in Munnar in the hills, as you can read in the next post, experiencing the outstanding natural beauty of Munnar.

Accommodation
Before we left the UK we more or less decided where to stay in the different places we planned to go to. Some were pre-booked, some weren't. Pookaka is described in Rough Guide as a place that “looks a bit dilapidated, but the good-sized en-suite rooms are clean, there's a good cheap restaurant and it's set in a secluded location with fine valley views”. It is definitely true that it looks a bit dilapidated (half the roof was missing), but the rooms definitely weren't clean, and seclusion, which normally means that it is quiet, has little importance when work on the hotel starts early in the morning generating plenty of noise, and there are other inexplicable noises coming from inside the hotel.

Our room was pretty poor. It was dusty in the wrong places, every surface was grimy, the sheets were manky (or just stained), the phone didn't work, there was a bed side lamp with a missing light bulb, the walls were damp, there were squashed insects attached to the walls, the toilet and sink were leaking resulting in a constantly wet bathroom floor, the towels smelt stale and the volume up button on the television remote control was missing. The final straw was that there was no hot water. This is common in many places in Kerala, and it isn't a problem if the climate is hot and humid. But since Munnar is cold at this time of year, hot water is very much needed. Further, the cold water in Munnar is a lot colder than cold water in the low lands of Kerala. Actually, it is rumoured that Pookaka did provide hot water after 8 am (not in the evening though), but this wasn't very useful for us. By 8 we would have left the hotel.

Obviously, we didn't try out the hotel restaurant.

The only redeeming feature of the hotel was that the the manager, we named him Mr Abrupt, spoke good English.
We talked to a few rickshaw drivers and the general view was that Pookaka wasn't what it used to be. It seems like the place to stay in Munnar is JJ Cottage. Rough Guide may even be right when they describe it as an “Excellent and very friendly homestay with rooms of varying sizes; the posh two front ones have stunning views of the hills”. We should have pre-booked at JJ Cottage. It was full whilst we were in Munnar. We know this because a couple of Germans, whom we later overheard complaining to Mr Abrupt about the noise in the hotel, had tried there before ending up in Pookaka.

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This entry was posted by pundabee, on Thursday, November 23, 2006. You can leave your response.