Cuppa Chai and Cardamom

I treated myself to two tea stations: Kumily and Munnar, Kerala. After a tour of a tea factory in Kumily (arrival by government bus of course with a little old lady next to me pointing out her yellow house and where I needed to get off the bus for my tea fix) I strolled around the tea plantation getting in amongst the small tea shrubs and watching the hardy and deft women pick kilos of tea. After muzzling my way in I was allowed to pick a few of the tea leaves using shears attached to a box to catch the leaves in! Lots of fun. This was slightly tainted by the male supervisor, who seemingly did very little but idly stand around and lie to tourists and his workers, who told these women that I was going to pay some sort of baksheesh for allowing me to photograph them. I'd promised no such thing. Awkward.

Munnar was like some little Switzerland complete with Swiss style alps, yummy dark chocolate (good chocolate here is a rarity and almost always disappointing - it just tastes of sugar, bah) and I was there with a Swiss girl. Bizarre but totally stunning (if cold!).

Cardamom galore in Kumily where I managed to have it in a juice (pineapple, papaya and heavily flavoured with cardamom)! Hooray. As well as copious amounts of cardamom tea. Lots of my highlights are pretty much food based. This cardamom juice was served alongside an interesting combo of two fried eggs on fried red onions and mounds of big bay leaves, accompanied by garlic butter and coriander (unpopular with other Castles) toast and some fresh cucumber garnish. Yum. This is one to recreate at home me thinks...