This family-run stay near Munnar offers traditional mud cottages near a sandalwood forest
The Mudhouse Marayoor is a women-led boutique stay spotlighting regional architecture and experiences in nature
When Pushpa Suresh and her family made occasional visits to Munnar from Kochi to tend to her husband’s organic farm, they didn’t want to stay in a hotel. They had a long-ignored family plot on the outskirts of Munnar along the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border in the village of Marayoor, where life revolves around farming, GI-tagged Marayoor jaggery, and safeguarding the prized sandalwood forest on its borders. Fascinated by manveedu—the traditional mud homes that have, for generations, sheltered the Anjunad Vellalar indigenous people from the region—the family turned to the very hands that had built them. In 2017, they built a twin mud cottage as a retreat for their infrequent stays, shaping it one handful of mud a time, over the course of a year.
About the stay
At the end of a steep village road, The Mudhouse Marayoor reveals itself like a well-kept secret, spread across four acres of gently sloping terrain. Cobblestone pathways wind through pockets of greenery bursting with frangipani, heliconia, and bougainvillaea, linking independent cottages that seem to have sprouted straight from the very earth.
