Munnar and Kochi Biennale

This was originally planned to be a short trip to Munnar which extended to be a trip to Kochi. 

28-February-2026

Left my home at 6:30 am and started on NH-44. We had originally planned to drive directly to Munnar but later decided to make a stopover at Coimbatore. Predominantly we wanted to reduce the continuous drive time and wanted to reach Munnar at proper day light.

8:00 am stopped at the food court near Shoolagiri. Had the breakfast at McDonald's and then continued at 9:05 am. 

Drove for another two and half hours and had a short break at Cafe Coffee Day on Salem - Kochi Highway. Left this place at 11:40am.

Drove for another two and half hours and arrived at Radisson Blu Hotel in Coimbatore.

In the evening we just walked to the Mall at the Laxmi Mills premises and then retired for the day.

01-March-2026

We started from Coimbatore at 11:40 am. We drove for almost four hours and then stopped at the Ripple Tea Shop at 3:31pm for a quick team break. We left this place at 3:54pm.

We finally arrived at the hotel in Munnar at 5:33 pm.

We just stayed indoors at hotel on 02-March-2026. 

03-March-2026

We visited Lockhart Tea Factory. Left our hotel at 10:02 am and arrived at the factory at 1:40 pm. We went through their tour till 3:07 pm. 

We then left from Lockhart Tea Factory and went to Tea Museum. We spent from 4:02 pm to 5:23 pm.

04-March-2026

We spent another day in the hotel pretty much doing nothing.

05-March-2026

We checked out from the hotel and left towards Kochi. We left at 11:08am and drove for almost 40 minutes and then saw a cafe naed Choco-Hut Chocolate. We stopped there just to check it out.

We arrived in Taj Malabar Resort at around 3:00 pm. We spent rest of the day in the hotel.

06-March-2026

This was the Kochi Biennale day. We got ready, had our breakfast. The first installation of Biennale was in the island itself. So we visited that first.

 

This installation was just opposite the water metro jetty, so we took the water metro from Wilingdon Island Boat Jetty to Mattancherry. The Biennale was spread all around Fort Kochi and Jew Town area. We went around pretty much the whole day looking at stuff that people had put together. It was a very interesting experience.

Finally we were back to our hotel by 8:00 pm.

07-March-2026

We checked out from the hotel. Now we just needed to drive back home. We left the hotel at 11:35 am. We drove for almost six hours and arrived in Avinashi and stopped at Annapoorna. We arrived here at 5:25 pm and left at 6:00 pm. 

We arrived at Texvalley at around 7:00 pm, just walked through the mall to check if we can find something interesting and then left. We were on our way at 7:30 pm.

Most roads in India are currently inflicted with the menace of wrong side driving.  People are putting themselves and others at risk.

We reached our home just past midnight.