Planning a trip to Munnar

For the last several years, October, December and April/May are the months to go on a long drive somewhere with my wife and kids. Typically in October we head towards some beach and in summer towards some hill station. December, usually is a low cost vacation visiting relatives in and around Mysore, my home town. This time for a change, we are headed to Munnar.

For some reason, I'm addicted to planning such trips and this addiction is so much that my wife believes that I can have an alternate career as a tour operator. Not a bad idea given how ill informed most of the travel people that I run into. Of course such indifferent tour operators are the primary reason why I started planning all my trips, all by myself. Thanks to internet, a ton of information is available in the form of blogs, travelogues and on the portals of the online communities of travel enthusiasts. All these make the job a lot easier than a trip to your neighborhood tour operator.

This time we chose to go to Munnar, a hill resort in the Idukki district of Kerala. I've been to this place twice during my bachelor days and simply love this place. I'm lot more excited this time, because I'd driving.

Typically, this is the process that works for me in planning my trips. Once the place is decided, I rely primarily on two sources - Outlook Traveller's Getaway Guides and HolidayIQ.com to select a decent place to stay. After identifying an approximate route map using a set of maps (I've all sorts of maps ranging from the India road atlas all the way to the district maps), I browse Team-BHP's travelogues and route information forum. Most information (distance between towns along the way, places to eat, petrol pumps, ATMs, current situation of the road and related tips) is directly available in this huge community of travel enthusiasts. These days, I've also started using MapMyIndia.com, which gives fairly good route map between any two places in India. The next step is to collect adequate information about the place, things to do, things to buy etc., I rely heavily on VirtualTourist.com for this information. Getaway guides also contain very useful information. Armed with all these, I plan out the complete itinerary. Since it is a vacation, we don't very strictly stick to the plan, but believe in the philosophy of "plans doesn't matter, but planning helps". This process has helped me travel peacefully and enjoy every moment of all our, including the one to Singapore and Malaysia.

Now, I've no idea what is so interesting in browsing the few websites mentioned above and going over maps. But it is addictive. Bunch of people in my network simply call me to get my suggestion on where to go, how to go and what to do. Perhaps there is some merit in considering an alternate career as a travel consultant.
Thank you very much,

RamP!