Neelakurinji in Munnar

How far will you go just to see a flower? How long you'll wait just to get a look at a flower?!

Our journey to Munnar was with the sole purpose of finding Neelakurinji flowers in the year, 2018. Neelakurinji is a breed of flowers that bloom once in every 12 years like how we say once in a blue moon.

I have learned about this flower in my childhood and always wanted to see the Nilgiri valley turns blue, yes I imagined the flowers to be a real blue and always wondered how great sight it'll be to see a blue valley. Well, needless to say, this trip was a correction to my long time imagination too.

(Click on the image to watch the video)

The Neelakurinji season was predicted to be from June-November. The bunch of flowers starts to dye after that. June is the starting of monsoon season in Kerala that continuous through July.

But, 2018 was the year where there was heavy rain that lasted for days and caused a great flood that engulfed the majority of the whole state. Munnar was one of the places that were affected severely with landslides and broken roads and flood.

Soon after the flood roads were cleared and normal life was slowly built. There was a huge investment aiming the Neelakurinji tourism that was destroyed in the flood but that was restored and slowly things came back to normal.

I have longed to see the Neelakurinji cover the valley since I was a child, we had to study about these little dwarf plants in school. My friend from a different part of India was also so eager to visit Munnar just to witness this rare event.

But, our plans were postponed due to unpredicted rain, work, and many more reasons until October. It was that one day we knew if we didn’t go now then we will be waiting another 12 years and who knows if we’ll last that long! So that being said, our Munnar trip was a spontaneous trip with no bookings and it was national holidays.

HOW TO REACH MUNNAR

We started our journey from Thrissur, another district in Kerala. So we opted for the bus to reach Munnar. There are KSRTC bus services that take you directly to Munnar. We started our journey early in the morning. Caught the first bus and had a fun bumpy ride for almost 4 hours. 

The plan was to get our sleep-deprived selves to sleep on the bus but that was the last thing that happened. With more distance covered the mountain ranges became more visible, the turns became narrower and the landscape started to change drastically.

The one thing about Kerala SRTC buses is that they take you through these amazing roads that you otherwise won’t be traveling, that’s the one reason I love bus rides.

Entering the district of Idukki itself you can feel the difference. Surrounded with tall trees and roads that pass through the hills with fresh air continuously hitting your face, the ride was just refreshing.

The bus tickets are cheap too but you have to compromise on the little discomfort of sitting throughout the journey. Other than buses you have the option to hire a taxi or rent a car to reach Munnar.

There is no train service directly to Munnar, the nearest train stations are Ernakulam and Kottayam. If you are coming to visit Munnar from outside of Kerala then the nearest airport is Cochin.

MUNNAR

Munnar is a hill station in the Idukki district of Kerala. Idukki itself is a hilly area and natural heaven. The more close we got to Munnar, we could see the green tea plantations on both sides of the road covered in mist and fog. Majority of Munnar has tea plantations farmed creating a green concentric pattern with pine trees in between.

The temperature started to drop down we could feel the cold sweep in through the windows. Our journey was delayed because of the congestion caused by the influx of tourists and the renewal of the broken roads. That meant we could get down from the bus and click a few pics on the road.

The fog-filled hills felt different, seemed different and ugh, I wish I could describe all of it in words.  The pink coloured petals stood out in the fog. The trimmed lean trees in between the lanes of tea plants looked felt like I am living inside a movie. You see, I love nature, I love the mist, I love hills and I have never experienced anything like this before, it was heaven!

Reaching the bus station we got down at Munnar town. There are two main bus stations you can opt for; Old Munnar and Munnar town. Both are not so far from each other. Munnar town is the center of Munnar with many shops and other facilities.

Old Munnar has many options for accommodation and has almost the same connectivity as Munnar town. There is a KSRTC bus station near Old Munnar.

HOTELS IN MUNNAR

Munnar is a very touristy place and hence there are many options for accommodation here. There are rooms and homestays available for every budget. The minimum rent for a day starts from INR-600 onwards and it depends on many factors.

We got down at Munnar town and there were many cheap homestays and rooms available but it was not very appealing. We found a contact number of a hostel but once we took the rickshaw to the hotel we understood it is far inside the town and dropped the plan.

The driver who took us suggested a homestay but that again was a little inside the town. We had to get to old town early in the morning the next day in order to get the tickets to Eravikulam National Park. So we ended up going back to Old Munnar in search of a room.

Old Munnar has many options too but better than Munnar town I found. Most of the hotels, hostel, and rooms listed online are in Old Munnar. Since it was the national holiday and end of Neelakurinji season, most of the rooms were sold out online and offline. We checked in so many places and got referred to some other options since the rooms were fully sold.

Finally, we settled in this place called Noah’s Ark Inn. The whole building had newly built rooms and renovated for the season. The rent was reasonable too, it was INR.1400 per day.

The room had a king/queen (I honestly don’t know the difference) sized bed, cupboards, TV, bathroom, and overall a good deal. Not so great if you are planning to stay longer, just that it is at a good location and the staff is friendly and helpful.

This place was a walk-able distance from the ticket counter for the national park and KSRTC bus stand.

I would recommend booking a room online if you are visiting in a peak season. But otherwise, there are many options to see the room for yourselves and book offline if you are planning to stay for a longer time.

Don’t really compromise on the room if you cannot tolerate the cold, it gets really chilly and makes sure you get/have a proper blanket to withstand the cold.

FOOD

We could not find many food options in Munnar especially in Old Munnar. But our trip was very short and most of it was spent in the queue so I cannot be sure about that. There were few local tea stalls, some simple street food options which served "porotta" and a side dish and a department store.

We found this restaurant called Butler’s creek beside a department store. This is the only place where we had a meal in all our trip. It’s a small restaurant that serves freshly prepared food. There are seats available to sit outside also. The service was good and a bit slow since they prepare the food fresh. Decent quantity and price too.

There is another restaurant near Butler’s creek but we could not get a seat. I’m guessing the more crowd means the food is good too. They serve North Indian, south Indian, Chinese cuisine.

Another restaurant on the road we entered, nobody really came to take our orders for a long time and we left the place after the long wait with a hungry stomach. I don't remember both the restaurant's names too. So we always ended up at Butler’s creek and it was good.

NEELAKURINJI AT ERAVIKULAM NATIONAL PARK

Neelakurinji is a shrub that is spread in the valleys of Munnar and nearby areas with similar climate. There are different species of these plants and one of them bloom once in every 12 years.

When they do it covers the valley in blue colour. Raja Mala is a hill that is protected by the state government, open to the public as a national park and this is where it usually blossoms. But, this year these flowers were seen in Kolukkumalai and other hills in Munnar.

With our time limitation and desire to see this flower that is being talked much about, we decided to go to Eravikulam national park that is Raja mala. We had gathered information about where they are still alive and Raja mala seemed like the best and safe option.

To reach "Kolukkumala" you need to take an off-road drive, there are jeeps available for that too. I have heard from other travelers who trekked to Kolukkumala that they could not really see anything because of the fog but the experience was amazing.

To reach Raja mala/Eravikulam National Park we needed to take the tickets either online or offline. You need to have a photo ID proof with you to take tickets. Online tickets were all sold out days before and there is a fixed amount of people that can visit the national park in a day.

When we were coming to Munnar we had seen the long queue that was extended to the road from a huge compound. So we planned to reach the ticket counter the next day early in the morning before it opens.

And we did. The counter opens at 7 and we reached at around 6.40 only to see a queue that started from the counter to the roadside. People lined up straight and when it started to get really long the police made us stand like a brain convolution.

That was a long wait, for another 4 hours! Yes, four hours!! Our perfect plan was to get the raja mala done in the first half of the day and roam around in Munnar the other half and leave the next day.

Well, needless to say, we were in the queue all morning. We got some "medu vada" and tea from someone who was selling it on cycle especially for the people in the queue. That was pretty much the breakfast we had. We were sure if we moved away from the queue we were not getting the tickets today.

Finally, it was 10 o’clock when we got the tickets.  Next is the ride from the ticket counter to the raja mala entry point. This ride costs INR.25 by shared jeep or bus depending on the availability. We were in the queue to get into the jeep next and reached Eravikulam national park entry after a bumpy ride through beautiful scenic places.

This is why it would be more fun if you are traveling on your own vehicle. There are many places where you can stop to just step out into nature and enjoy just by being there. The driver of the jeep told us about the flood time experience. How the whole area was in the water when the dams were opened, the animals tried to escape by coming near their houses and so on.

It was a 9 km ride to Eravikulam national park and we were again disappointed at the situation there. Another long queue of people waited there with the tickets to get into the bus.

You cannot enter Rajamala on your own. There are buses that are arranged by the authority which takes you till a point and back to this point.  What followed was another 2-hour-long wait.

There were people selling snacks, fresh carrots, corn and more. We got one boiled corn and raw mango with some chilly and salt sprinkled on it, that was our lunch!

Raja mala is also home to Nilgiri Tahr. When we were in the bus suddenly someone screamed “dhe varayadu (look, there’s tahr)" and there they were, three of them casually crossing the road and vanished into the green bushes. They looked more like goats, healthier and little different and wild.

The bus leaves you at one point and then we can hike the rest till another point. We were not allowed to carry plastic bottles or food items beyond this point. There is a checkpoint where we kept the chocolates that we bought from the shop here. The last point I mentioned is the limit and the entry beyond this point is restricted.

We were happy to see the flowers alive however a little bit sad that we didn’t do this sooner to catch the entire place filled with the flowers. But it was worth all the wait. The flowers entirely changed my childhood imagination of bright blue flowers filling the valley. It was a lighter shade of blue and the flowers stay in a bunch. You’re not allowed to touch them or destroy the plants. There are guards everywhere.

Don’t try to take pictures like this too, not just that it is dangerous but the guards will make you get down. Don’t do it, lesson learned!

Raja mala other than the flower part was good too. Other than Neelakurinji this hill is home to many other flowers, ferns, and plants. There is a huge rock with a waterfall that runs through it and it adds a lot to the scene. It feels like you are walking among the clouds and fog and mist fills the roads as you go up.

Majority of the flowers were at the top and they were fenced with wooden fences. Here is what I could capture with my little camera. Soon enough it started to rain and we somehow reached the foot of the hill where the bus left us. There was a huge queue for the return bus too. Thankfully we got into the next bus with the mercy of people. When we reached back to the entry point, there was still a long queue now on both sides of the road.

We got a jeep ride to our room and from there we packed and left towards the KSRTC bus station. Had the same chicken noodles that we had the other day and some crispy vegetables. That was the end of or Munnar trip. Reached back to Thrissur by 9 at night.

Munnar is an awesome place that is on my wishlist now to explore. for its other beautiful locations

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