Munnar

Munnar sits at about 1,600 metres in the Western Ghats, in Idukki district, where three mountain streams, the Mudrapuzha, Nallathanni and Kundala, meet. The name is usually explained as "three rivers". Rolling tea estates cover the hills around the town, broken up by patches of shola forest and grassland, and mist settles in the valleys most mornings.

The town grew up as a tea-growing centre under British planters in the late 1800s and became a summer retreat for officials of the Madras Presidency. Tea is still the main industry, and the Tata Tea Museum on the Nallathanni estate shows how the leaf is processed, from old rollers to the modern factory.

Eravikulam National Park, just north of the town, protects the Nilgiri tahr, a mountain goat found only in the Western Ghats. Anamudi, the highest peak in India south of the Himalayas at 2,695 metres, rises inside the park. Every twelve years the hills turn blue when the neelakurinji shrub flowers across the grasslands.

The road east to Top Station climbs past Mattupetty Dam, Echo Point and Kundala Lake to a viewpoint on the Kerala–Tamil Nadu border. Spice gardens, waterfalls such as Attukad and Lakkam, and the forests of Chinnar and Marayoor are within a day's drive.