Beneath the hills of Munnar lies the stunning Vattawada, a paradise for strawberry lovers. My friends and I, who live in Kochi, started the journey early in the morning to Vattavada. The first destination was Munnar, a popular hill station for many of us. The hill station is gorgeous with tea plantations around the slopes. We hastened to lunch as our trip would take 2-3 hours from Munnar. The road to Vattawada is quiet with less traffic and plenty of local fruits to try. You can find dozens of fresh carrots with its stems, cleaned in cold water. They really need to try and one will feel the novelty of it. Finally comes a check post where we have to provide our details. This is the beginning of the PampadumShola National Park. Travelling through the dense forest is breathtaking.
Vattawada is a small town with local shops and small plantations of carrots and strawberries. We were guided by a local guide to a farm of strawberry and carrots. Strawberries were fresh and they also sell homemade wine, jams and even pickles of strawberry. Local tea stalls and cakes are definitely a must-try. We had our evening tea and a couple of cakes.
We brought some chicken and headed to our resort Dream Valley. It is a medium and expensive resort with a swimming pool. By 6 pm the temperature was 15 and the pool was really crazy. We swam, drank, cooked chitchat, and listened to music. It was very cold in the morning, sorry I was so busy with other things I couldn't check the phone for the exact temperature. We spend more time watching the blue sky and the long mountains. We had good views of the mountains from our resort. The resort was a decent one with good breakfast. We had our breakfast and boarded back. If one has to feel the cold, mountains, wines, a remote village with less crowd, vattavada is definitely the place.
