Backwaters, Coconuts, Wild-life, Elephants...all at one place

Called KERALA.

Rohit and I have just returned from our trip to Kerala. It was a long weekend and none of us had been to Kerala so just planned to go there. Actually the best part of the trip was that it was completely un-planned except for Hyderabad to Kochi and back air-tickets.

From Kochi, we headed towards Kumarakom - place known for backwaters. Yes, that's all what we knew and were thinking of spending all 3 days there. On the way, we called to a resort for checking the room availability.

Kumarkom was a nice place but a small village! Our room in resort was just opposite the Vemband lake.

Also we were informed that "you are expected to relax here". As we hadn't come for relaxing so we thought of going to some other place after exploring the backwaters.

Next day morning after breakfast, we worked out the plan for the day. We would go for country boating and then sight seeing in Kottayam and then a bus to Thekkady.

Luckily for country boat, we got a nice boat person. While negotiating price he told he was an ex-serviceman and won't tell lie and I was impressed! Salute to the great Indian Army! He took us to backwaters...canal and lake and also showed some birds in bird sanctuary area! It was all splendidly beautiful and scenic.

Just peaceful, a small boat, calm water, aquatic plants, coconut trees as far as could be seen and also the local village people and their houses.

No rush, no crowd, no pollution, no noise! But our cell phone signal was there thanks to a rapidly grown Indian telecom industry.

Definitely one can spend three days there just relaxing if one wants to!

But as we didn't so we headed for Kottayam. Saw a church and a temple there. At 4:00 PM we boarded a bus to Kumily. Kumily is the town just next to Thekkady.

To our suprise, the way to Kumily was hilly. So for just 114 km the bus took long 4 hours.

Dead tired, we just got a room in a hotel. Didn't have to negotiate much...or we were not in a mood to! Had our dinner and relaxed watching TV. Rohit wanted to catch up with what's happening in Gujarat politics. Definitely Narendra Modi has drawn national attention for all bad and good reasons. Though personally I don't have a good perception about him because of media reports accusing him of genocide in Gujrat.

There was a slight disappointment about the food in Kerala. We wanted to have Karela food but it wasn't available in decent restaurants. Where it might be, the places itself were not nice.

So we had same north Indian meals except for one Kerala lunch meal.

Again, here there was nothing planned. So we got a tourist pamphelet from a hotel. It listed many things and we marked our priorities.

Next day morning we went to a tourist information center. The lady at the recpetion helped us carve out a plan that was fully tight for whole day. So we just skipped breakfast. The previous day we had missed lunch. Of course, we had come for activity not relaxing.

The first thing we had was Elephant ride over a female elephant named Monisha.

Next a spice plantation tour. Surely nice it was.

Vanilla, Coffee, Pepper, Cinamon, Cardamom and many more. Also natural rubber trees.

After lunch, we went for a 3 hr trekking in the forests of Periyar wild life sanctuary which is also a tiger reserve and national park.

It was awesome to be in the midst of nature. A lake, forest and trees all around and some wild animals like squiralls, monkeys, wild boars etc.

In the evening we watched Kerala marshal art show - Kalari and Kerala traditional dance form - Kathakali. And it was end of the day.

Since we had gone very far from Kochi airport for we had to reserve the next full day for just travel.

Overall it was a fun, adventurous and mind refreshing trip. Some more funny and interesting things also happened which I have not mentioned here. Above all, got to understand about Kerala closely.