Elakai Munnar

What an incredible experience! Elakai is a unique and special place stunning location with the amazing attention to detail to the amazing Chef Dintu who cooked delicious world class dinner each night to our taste. The manager Sajeev was the most impeccable host attending to all our needs from wine to taxis!! And thank you to Mahandra who helped keeping all the meals delivered and the house in keeping.

My wife and I stayed at Elakai for 4 nights. It was definitely the highlight of our month-long Kerala trip. The property is beautifully landscaped, and you have the whole villa to yourself. There are 2 identical bedrooms and bathrooms, one on each side of the villa. Both have comfortable queen beds, spacious bathrooms with walk-in showers and free-standing bathtubs, sliding doors onto the veranda, and A/C splits. In between the bedrooms is a massive living room and dining room. There is ample seating for relaxing and dining. The whole room has floor-to-ceiling windows with sliding doors onto the veranda, which runs the length of the villa. The veranda overlooks a hillside with lush vegetation and has a distant view of the lake. There are two dining tables with chairs on each side of the veranda, and we enjoyed our breakfasts and lunches out there. Birdwatching was good from the veranda and we also saw a Malabar Giant Squirrel. We were amazed by the lack of bugs at this time of year. It was so great to be able to leave the sliding doors open during the day and also sit outside unmolested by insects. We cannot say enough good things about the staff. Sanjeev, the manager, took great care of us, as did his assistant, Vishnu. They were both welcoming, smiling, professional, helpful, and respectful of our privacy. We had a problem with the hot water initially, which Sanjeev was able to remedy. After that, we had abundant hot water. The chef, Dinto, is amazing. He checked in with us at least twice a day to ask our preferences for meals. For breakfast, we had eggs cooked to order, an Indian dish, homemade muesli, fresh fruit, a different fresh juice each day, and toast with butter/jam. Since we weren’t very hungry at lunchtime, we had excellent soup and chapatis or chapati wraps with spiced vegetables and chicken. For dinner we had something different each evening: Kingfish (the best we’ve had), beef curry, butter chicken, and Arabian chicken. We also always had a fresh salad, rice, vegetables, and potatoes or bread. One night we had the most delicious fried zucchini with Indian spices. Desserts were elegant and delicious. Everything was so good and we ate too much! We cannot recommend Elakai highly enough. Some might think at first glance that the villa is too isolated, being an hour from Munnar. We are now in Munnar and while the scenery might be grander, it is much more congested with traffic and crowded with tourists. We loved our early morning drives with our driver around the cardamom and tea plantations near Elakai. There was little traffic or people out and about at that time of day. We also enjoyed sitting in the living room or on the veranda, quietly reading and looking out at the scenery. WiFi is good if you want to surf the internet or need to work.

What a wonderful team. We felt like royalty with our own chef catering to our every whim. Sajeev the manager was extremely good. This home stay is stunning and extremely quiet which is a nice contrast to the hustle and bustle of India. We never expected such luxury designer accommodation.