Enchanting MUNNAR

We have been thinking to visit Munnar for it's enchanting landscapes and of course to capture some Macro photographs esp during our herping sessions.

This is all about how we have planned and executed our trip along with our experiences through out.

PLANNING

We have planned this trip two months before, Me and my cousin planned it in such a way that I drive my car all the way to Munnar while he joins the trip at Coimbatore. So we made Coimbatore our pit stop for the TO and FRO journey. We completed all our bookings in Booking.com one month before our actual trip.

• I drive from Bangalore to Coimbatore on 27th Sep and reach Coimbatore by afternoon. While my cousin lands in Coimbatore on the same day evening.

• We have booked IKON by Annapoorna for the 27th night stay as it is near to GD Car museum and we did not have any idea about the Coimbatore traffic.

• Visiting Car Museum for an hour on 28th Morning and have an early lunch at Coimbatore before starting to Munnar.

• Booked KTDC Tea county for our stay in Munnar. As per google rating it is a decent place to stay and have good food options, in fact some reviews say that food won't be that great. I even had some personal suggestions to avoid KTDC as it might be poorly maintained being a Government one and all. However we really liked the property pics posted in google and Booking.com. Our priority was a good stay, we can always find some other options for food, bearing this in mind we finalized KTDC Tea county for our 5 day stay in Munnar.

• Resplendent Experiences run by Hadlee Renjith has got five out of five ratings in google. I checked out Renjith's Insta profile and realized that this would be the right one for our herping sessions at Munnar. We contacted Renjith and booked his services for 5 days straight during our stay.

• We booked Fairfield by Marriott for 3rd-Sep night stay in Coimbatore during our return journey thinking this should be the best hotel near Airport in Coimbatore.

• I drive back to Bangalore on 4th-Sep while my cousin flies back to Hyderabad on the same day.

We stopped after two hours of drive and clicked some shots on Yashica-A, there are three forest check-posts and the Kerala guys collected 50/- for nothing to let us through, I drove in the Ghat section till 9:15PM to reach KTDC Tea County. Drive was tough and there was thick fog at few places which made my drive even more challenging. Tea county guys were waiting for us and they offered us help to settle down in our rooms and asked us to order dinner immediately. After having a tasty dinner, we were excited to test our camera rain gear, so we have taken them out and started clicking some pics till midnight 1AM around the property.

At morning we started capturing some flowers inside property and after a while we noticed that there is a botanical garden nearby and went there to check it out.

Garden is pretty new, in fact many sections are still under construction or under renovation. I clicked few flowers here and it rained for a while and by noon I was too tired to keep my eyes open due to sleeplessness from past two days. I was just waiting for my cousin to come back so that we can have our lunch real quick and take rest at the room.

We had tried Lunch in a local restaurant outside and realized that KTDC serves best food of all, so we have decided not to have food anywhere else except in KTDC Tea County. Rooms are so damn good that we feel refreshed as soon as return to the room even before taking rest. We were waiting for Hadlee Renjith to discuss about our herping sessions, he came at around 5PM and introduced us to Matthew from his team who will be guiding us on all our sessions here in Munnar. After a lot of thought process we have decided to go to herping at 6:30PM.

Due to heavy rain we called it a day and returned back to the resort at around 9:30PM, had a tasty and hot dinner before un-packing ourselves from the rain gear. Re-arranged everything in our room took bath and went to bed.

Day-4 (30-Aug-2022)

We took a good rest before starting another herping session at 6:30PM today. While I went out to the Eravikulam National park in the morning, it was a foggy day and we found nothing in the park except few birds and a leech, returned to the resort by noon and had a decent lunch before taking rest at afternoon. In today's session our target species was Star-eyed frog and may be the large scale viper if we are lucky enough, in fact my target species in this trip was Vine snake as I was fascinated by it from past many years. Renjith said we will be going to locate Vine snake in the grass lands tomorrow and that too if we are lucky with the rain as Vine snakes come out to bask in the Sun and it's raining heavily everyday here. So for now the hopes are very less for Vine snake too. At this point I was hoping to capture at least one snake in this trip. We drove a long way towards the National Park and parked our car on road side in pitch dark. On the way we met Renjith's team trying to locate elephant on the tea plantations but it was already dark to capture it. We started walking towards a tea plantation in the dark with our head lamps on and it was raining heavily as always. We have to cross a small stream road side and Matthew started tracking Star-eyed frog. We got few shots of star eyed frog and Nilgiri frog species and we were walking into knee deep mud with lots of leeches on our dress. After capturing two species here and walked back into the tea plantation through the water stream. After coming back to the car, my cousin and me were helping each other to get rid of leeches that were trying to climb up till face over our rain suit, after almost 30 min of struggle, we made sure that we are free from leeches before sitting in the car and started driving towards yesterday's location.

We found a Beddomii species frog and few others and a Large scale viper on top of a tree which is almost impossible to capture. After searching for almost 30 min we found a Juvenile of Large scale Viper and this is the first snake sighting in the trip. I was very happy to capture it and after taking decent amount of shots we pre ordered our dinner and had it in our room at midnight after getting rid of leeches that were on our suits outside the room. It was another tiring day and was overwhelming with lots of leeches all over. We couldn't get rid of leeches from our mind, we wanted to make sure that we were not getting any leeches into the room, ensure we are clean before going to bed.

It was a 20 min walk to reach the grass lands and we started searching for the two species that we came for and first we spotted a Vine snake (Brown), which was even better for me as I never saw a brown one before, Vine snakes usually appear in green color. First of all, I am very happy that I got the one that I wanted to capture here. I started taking multiple shots of the Vine snake, luckily, I got a one on one macro shot too. After that we spotted a Resplendent frog.

I felt like the actual beauty of the frog can never be shown in the photographs we took, it's a tiny, colorful, calm and one of the beautiful looking frog. After capturing these two subjects we had our lunch and started back to Resort. We are too tired for the day because of the bumpy and long ride. We found few lion faced monkeys on the way back. We had some tea at evening in the resort and took rest for the day after our early dinner.

Day-6 (1-Sep-2022)

Last day in Munnar (2-Sep-2022)

Being the last day for photography in Munnar, we thought of making the most of it, I started capturing macro inside the property and after a while late in the morning we went out for a drive towards Kundala dam, hoping we may spot some wild elephants and some landscapes on the way. We went till eco point clicked some landscapes and on our way back to resort we saw a group of people standing on the side of the road and we immediately spotted the wild elephants grazing, we jumped in excitement and changed the lens in a hurry and ran to capture elephants. There was a lot of crowd and some people are behaving like monkeys while we were completely into capturing the elephants.

After shooting elephants, we returned to resort and had a late lunch by 3PM. Today being the last herping session, we thought of searching for Jayarami bush frog along with Large scale viper if possible so that we can end this trip with a sense of satisfaction. After capturing the calls of Griet frog and Jayarami Bush frog and normal shots of few other frogs we headed towards the spot where we found Large scale viper on the second day and to our surprise we found a Large scale viper in the bushes, we have taken some decent shots with it's tongue out, spent some time with it noticing it's movements and all.

We took some good poses of the viper and called it a day. We thanked Matthew for his wonderful support through out the trip and said our Good-byes to Hadlee Renjith for the awesome herping experiences during our stay in Munnar.

3-Sep-2022

Woke up leisurely and had a good breakfast, Packed all our stuff and went out for some spices shopping in the day. Stuffing the luggage in Tiago car is a task as we had lot of luggage with us. We somehow managed to stuff everything and relaxed for a while, payed all our dues and had a heavy lunch. Started driving back to Coimbatore at around 2PM, it was raining heavily during the downhill drive and the roads were not wide enough, so the drive was tricky but I drove back to Coimbatore without any breaks. We reached Coimbatore by 6PM. As always google navigation doesn't work properly in Coimbatore and it took us into a wrong way, however we managed and came out of it without much difficulty and checked in to Fairfield by Marriott. We took a refreshing bath and went for the dinner (pre-booked buffet). The rooms are quite small and felt congested, this was the costliest hotel in the trip though, however there are no much complaints other than small rooms. The main reason to book this hotel is that it is just 5 min away from airport. We crashed into bed after our dinner and next day I drove back to Bangalore while my cousin flew away to Hyderabad.

No doubt we will visit sometime soon and will definitely get in touch with Hadlee Renjith(Resplendent Experiences) again.

On the whole this was an Enchanting experience in Munnar.