Tea Museum

The KDHP Tea Museum, housed in the Nallathanni Estate about 1.5 kilometres from Munnar town, is one of the better small industrial museums in India. The Kannan Devan Hills Plantation Company — now part of the Tata Group, but worker-owned since a landmark buyout in 2005 — has been growing tea in these hills since 1879, and the museum documents that history with original machinery, period photographs, and a clear explanation of how the plantation was established and how it operates today.

The highlight is the working machinery: the rolling, fermenting, and drying equipment that processes the tea is all original Victorian-era hardware that has been maintained and kept in working order. You can watch a demonstration of the full processing cycle. Afterwards, tea tasting and direct purchases from the estate make this a full experience rather than just a history lesson. Open daily; entry fee is modest.

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A story
The Kannan Devan Hills Plantation (KDHP) has been growing tea here since 1879, when the first British planters arrived and found that the altitude and rainfall of the Western Ghats produced an outstanding leaf. The museum's vintage machinery — rollers, driers, fermentation chambers — is all original, and much of it is still in working order. The processing method demonstrated has barely changed in 140 years: the tea is still made the same way the first superintendents prescribed, with the same varieties grown at the same elevations.