Nature in Bison Valley and Munnar

We took a bus from Fort Kochi to Munnar. Technically, we didn’t make it all the way to Munnar, we got off the bus early and took a rickshaw to Bison Valley. Bison Valley is a tiny village about 1.5 hrs outside Munnar surrounded by cardamom plantations. It was a bit more off the beaten tourist path than other places we’ve been so far, which was refreshing.

Getting out into nature, listening to birds, and going on walks was incredibly relaxing. We didn’t realize how much we’d missed it until we got there. Our resort was on a cardamom plantation, and surrounded by very steep roads through more plantations growing bananas, papayas, pepper, and coffee. We spent a fair amount of time strolling/climbing the roads.

At any given time, at least one of us was out on the balcony on this swing.

And this is why. The view from our balcony:

Cardamom plants, seeds and flower. Cardamom flowers from separate stems underneath its leafy canopy, so we were looking in the wrong place for the cardamom seeds for a while.

Rickshaws are everywhere in this area. Even in the tiny little village of Bison Valley, there were always 3-4 waiting around. So we took one out to see a tea plantation one day. Our plans were thwarted when the road to our planned plantation was closed because it ‘broke’. But our rickshaw driver rescued our failed adventure!

He took us to some cool spots that only locals know about with spectacular views and saw more farm land with rice fields and eucalyptus and rubber tree groves.

Oh, just some 500+ year old structures (apparently) lying about:

We drove all over hills covered in tea plantations. The scope of the plantations were breathtaking. Everywhere we looked, the valley slopes were completely covered in tea plants.