Munnar is Kerala's most popular hill station, set at 1,500 metres in the Western Ghats about 130 km east of Kochi. The landscape is stunning: rolling hills covered in tea plantations as far as you can see, with low clouds drifting through the valleys and the air noticeably cool after the heat of the lowlands.
The town itself is not much to look at, but the surroundings are spectacular. The Kannan Devan tea plantations are among the highest in the world, and the Tea Museum lets you watch century-old machinery process the leaf and buy tea directly from the estate. For the truly committed, the Kolukkumalai Tea Estate — the highest tea estate in the world at 8,000 feet — is a jeep ride and a trek from Suryanelli, with views that justify every effort.
Eravikulam National Park is the best place in India to see the endangered Nilgiri tahr in the wild — the animals are so habituated to visitors that they graze within metres of the observation areas. The park is also home to the Neelakurinji flower, which blooms once every twelve years turning the hillsides blue (next bloom 2030), and Anamudi, South India's highest peak at 2,695 metres. Mattupetty Dam and Lake, 13 kilometres from town, adds a landscape of still water and eucalyptus to the usual tea-and-mist panorama.