MISTY MUNNAR
Munnar is formed by the confluence of three mountain streams: Mudrapuzha, Nallathanni, and Kundala. This hill camp, located 1,600 metres above sea level, was originally the summer retreat of the British Government in South India. Munnar is one of Kerala’s most popular honeymoon destinations, with a variety of resorts and lodging options to suit a variety of budgets. This renowned vacation town is known for its sprawling tea plantations, gorgeous towns, winding pathways, and holiday facilities. The Neelakurinji is a type of exotic vegetation found in the forests and grasslands of this region. This flower, which blooms every twelve years and bathes the hills in blue, will bloom next in 2030. Munnar is also home to Anamudi, South India’s tallest mountain at 2,695 metres.
HISTORY OF MUNNAR
For thousands of years, hunter-gatherer tribals such as the Malayarayan and Muthuvan have lived in the area. Colonel Arthur Wellesley, afterwards the Duke of Wellington, is said to have been the first British person to pass through Munnar during Tippu Sultan’s Travancore campaign, however this is unproven. Benjamin Swayne Ward, who followed the Periyar into the Western Ghats and constructed a camp at the confluence of three rivers, which is where the name Munnar comes from, was the first to examine the landscape in 1816–1817.
Sir Charles Trevelyan, Governor of Madras, ordered Col. Douglas Hamilton to explore the hill country in the western part of the Madras Presidency, requesting special advice on the feasibility of establishing sanatoria for the British in the South and developing revenue-generating projects without endangering the environment, as had happened in Ceylon, where coffee had destroyed not only the rain forest but also paddy cultivation.In the Munnar region, Hamilton scaled the Ghats. Many of Munnar’s lands were suited for coffee planting 15 years later, according to John Daniel Munro. Munro, Henry Turner, and his half-brother AW Turner bought the Cardamom Hills from the Raja of Travancore in 1879 and started clearing forest near Devikulam. Throughout the 1880s, several other Europeans began developing tea plantations in the area. Plantations in the early days had few amenities and were mostly straw cottages. The majority of the tea estate workers were Dalits from modern-day Tamil Nadu.
Planters at Bodinayakanur, in western Madras Presidency, received provisions from a local headman, Suppan Chetty, after roads to the lowlands were eventually opened. He and his son, Alaganan Chetty (later an MLA), would continue to supply the region’s tea estates. By 1894, there were 26 estates in the hills, but they were all losing money. In 1897, a separate company, Kannan Devan Hills Corporation (KDHC), was formed to manage the tea estates, which was later taken over by the American Direct Tea Trading Company Ltd., which owned 26 estates, the majority of which were planted with coffee and some with cinchona, and almost all of which were located in the area, with the exception of a few in the lower areas.
LOCATION
Geographic coordinates of Munnar is 10°05′21″N 77°03′35″E. Munnar town is situated on the Kannan Devan Hills village in Devikulam taluk and is the largest panchayat in the Idukki district covering an area of nearly 557 square kilometres (215 sq mi).
GEOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE
The region in and around Munnar varies in height from 1,450 meters (4,760 ft) to 2,695 meters (8,842 ft) above mean sea level. The temperature ranges between 5 °C (41 °F) and 25 °C (77 °F) in winter and 15 °C (59 °F) and 25 °C (77 °F) in summer. Temperatures as low as −4 °C (25 °F) have been recorded in the Sevenmallay region of Munnar.
DEMOGRAPHICS
Munnar Grama Panchayat has a population of 32,039 people according to the 2011 Indian census. Males made up 16,061 of the total. There were 15,968 males and 7,968 females in all, with 7,968 families living there. There were 2,916 children in the age group of 0–6 years old (9.1% of the total population), with 1,478 boys and 1,438 females. The overall literacy rate of Munnar Panchayat was 84.85%, which was much lower than the Kerala state average of 94.00%. Female literacy was 78.64 percent, whereas male literacy was 91.05 percent.
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