Sunday, March 19, 2006
My trip to Kerala
Kerala is known as God's Own Country. Itz become India's most prefered and visited tourist destination (ok, probably after the Taj Mahal), and although the place is without doubt gifted with some astounding natural beauty, the Keralites have also made a conscious attempt to boost tourism, something not often seen in India.
So, when my project-mate Renju was getting married in Kerala, we (me, Jayant, Adithya, Sundeep, Suyog and Saritha) jumped on this opportunity to visit Kerala. We left Bangalore by Karnataka State Road Transport's Airavata Volvo bus. I must add here that the service provided by KSRTC was refreshing - quite literally. They provide you with a bottle of mineral water, a plastic bag that you can use in case you are prone to vomitting while travelling by road, and a refreshing tissue! We reached Alleppey early in the morning after a 13 hour journey. Renju's father had booked us at Hotel Royal Park at Alleppey. After getting fresh, we had breakfast at the hotel itself (pretty good, I must say).
Then we had our first encounter with Kerala hospitality. We had to gift wrap the gift we intended to give at the marriage. Fortunately for us, there was a gift shop right next to the hotel. The shop-keeper wrapped the gift with such care as if he was dedicating it to his girl-friend :)
We attended the marriage at Changanacherry and spent the rest of the day at Allepey, in the beach. Allepey beach, in spite of itz fame and crowd, still boasts of clean water and shores. It was a pleasure being in in the water at the Alleppey beach.
After getting back to the hotel and getting ourselves rid of the tons of sand that we had accumulated all over, we decided to take a walk along Alleppy streets. Jayant got the brilliant idea of purchasing playing cards so that we can play cards after dinner. We asked a shop opposite the hotel if he has playing cards. The rustic shop owner said that sale of playing cards is prohibited in Kerala (although I dont think thatz the case!). He however offered to get us playing cards in another 15 mins at no extra cost. We thanked him and next went to the shop where we had gone earlier in the morning for gift wrapping. The shop-keeper not just guided us to the shop where we could get playing cards (apparently, no prohibition at that shop!) but also asked us how the marriage was, where the marriage was held, et cetera!
We played cards till past midnight. Next day we woke up at 3am and left for Munnar by 4am. We went via Ernakulam and then took NH-49 to Munnar. We reached Munnar at about 11am and there Abhiskek - the guide for our Munnar trek - was ready waiting for us. We had arranged for a 2-day trek thru Kalypso Adventures. On our way, we were joined by Mr.Johnson, a Kerala forest department official who would arrange for our base camp in the Munnar forest reserve. We started the trek from Silent Valley. On our way we stopped at a forest department guest house for lunch. We reached our base camp by about 4:30pm. Surprisingly, even after a 4-5 hr trek, none of us felt even a hint of tiredness. The weather was great, cloudy most of the time, but the main reason to wipe out our tiredness was the continuos stream of water that we encountered all along the trek. The power of chill water to remove tiredness must be experienced to be believed! Each time we encountered water, we spalshed some on our face, took a few sips at times, and this kept us at high spirits all the time.
At the base camp, we were greeted by the support staff who had already reached there by a jeep. Not just had they had put up the camps, they had also made a temporary bathroom for us with a western-style commode! After taking rest at the base camp for about 30 mins during which we were served coffee/tea along with biscuits and bananas, we decided to venture out on a trek on our own, leaving Mr.Johnson and Abhishek back.
We came back to the base camp once it started getting dark. Thatz when I realised the goof-up I had made in not getting warm clothing! Temperature was dropping steeply (it reached approx. 4 degrees celsius later in the night) and I had nothing but 2 T-shirts. The camp fire was the saving grace and any movement more than a couple of meters away from the camp fire reminded me how chilly a hill-station down south can get even in February! We assembled near the camp-fire and got going again with playing cards.
The most pleasant surprise of our trip was to come next. In the middle of the forest, the Kalypso folks had arranged for us a meal fit for more celebrated surroundings. We were served with tomato soup for starters, poori, rice and seven different dishes for main course, and two sweets and sliced pine-apples for dessert! With their highly limited apetite, Sundeep and Saritha could not do complete justice to the meal, although me, Jayant and Adithya relished every bit of it!
Post-dinner session was reserved for playing dumb-charades. Me, Sundeep and Saritha were in one team and Adithya and Jayant formed the other team. What began as time-pass, became pretty competitive as the game went on. When Jayant enacted 'Heera Aur Panna', Adithya got the diamond and the pages part, but could not get itz Hindi equivalent. When I enacted 'Serendipity', Sundeep and Saritha got the Serena and Pity part, but could not put them together. When Sundeep enacted 'Anubhav', me and Saritha got 'aane' (as in elephant in Kannada) and 'bow' (as in the barking sound of the dog), but could not put those two together! The highlight of the game was Adithya's sting act when he was enacting 'Madhumati', something that has to be seen to be appreciated and best left not described. In the middle we had Jayant wondering the connect between paan and banner, when Adithya wanted to indicate 'Banarsi Babu'. We came back from been 2-4 down to level the scores at 4-each. It was already 2am and Mr.Johnson was tired of waiting for us to go to sleep and had gone to sleep already. We decided that we will have just one more round and whoever looses will have to dance to the tunes of the winners.
I gave 'Wajood' for Jayant to enact, and in 4 mins Adithya got the 'Wajoo-' part of it. With 60 seconds remaining, we were sure that he will not get the exact name, but with 10 secs remaining, Adithya somehow stumbled upon the correct word. Now it was my turn to enact, and the movie I got was 'K 19 - The Widow Maker'!!! Quite unbelievably, I was able to enact this and when we got to it in less than 3 mins, I was as wild as winning a world cup!
Next day morning, after the morning ablutions, we had breakfast. In true Kalypso style, the breakfast comprised of corn-flakes, aloo-parathas, bread-butter-jam, oranges, bananas and apples! After the breakfast, we started on our trek back to Silent Valley through the Meesapulimala hills and the shola forests around it. It was about 8:30am when we started trekking and the sun was shining with full vigour. The sunny weather took toll of us, and the trek back to Silent Valley was quite exhausting. With several pit-stops for munching on oranges, dry grapes, dates and banana-sandwich (diligently packed by the Kalypso folks for us), we reached Silent Valley at about 1:30pm.
The trek on day 2 was the tiring part. We had pooris that the Kalypso folks had packed for us for lunch and started on our way to Ernakulam from where was our bus back to Bangalore.
For me the most endearing part of the trip were:
1. The friendly nature of the each and every people we met - right from the person who gift-wrapped for us, our guides during the trek, our can driver, the shop-keeper in the Ernakulam bus-stand from where I bought banana chips - all of them were friendly with us, which was quite a refreshing experience.
2. Things were quite cheap in Kerala - from the hotel we stayed in Alleppey, the rate for the Innova we hired (it was just Rs.7/km), to the cost of the trek - everything were quite cheap!
Overall, it was an exhilarating experience, and the best trek I had till now!
Do not talk much, but feel the spirit within you.
-Swami Vivekananda
Kerala is known as God's Own Country. Itz become India's most prefered and visited tourist destination (ok, probably after the Taj Mahal), and although the place is without doubt gifted with some astounding natural beauty, the Keralites have also made a conscious attempt to boost tourism, something not often seen in India.
So, when my project-mate Renju was getting married in Kerala, we (me, Jayant, Adithya, Sundeep, Suyog and Saritha) jumped on this opportunity to visit Kerala. We left Bangalore by Karnataka State Road Transport's Airavata Volvo bus. I must add here that the service provided by KSRTC was refreshing - quite literally. They provide you with a bottle of mineral water, a plastic bag that you can use in case you are prone to vomitting while travelling by road, and a refreshing tissue! We reached Alleppey early in the morning after a 13 hour journey. Renju's father had booked us at Hotel Royal Park at Alleppey. After getting fresh, we had breakfast at the hotel itself (pretty good, I must say).
Then we had our first encounter with Kerala hospitality. We had to gift wrap the gift we intended to give at the marriage. Fortunately for us, there was a gift shop right next to the hotel. The shop-keeper wrapped the gift with such care as if he was dedicating it to his girl-friend :)
We attended the marriage at Changanacherry and spent the rest of the day at Allepey, in the beach. Allepey beach, in spite of itz fame and crowd, still boasts of clean water and shores. It was a pleasure being in in the water at the Alleppey beach.
After getting back to the hotel and getting ourselves rid of the tons of sand that we had accumulated all over, we decided to take a walk along Alleppy streets. Jayant got the brilliant idea of purchasing playing cards so that we can play cards after dinner. We asked a shop opposite the hotel if he has playing cards. The rustic shop owner said that sale of playing cards is prohibited in Kerala (although I dont think thatz the case!). He however offered to get us playing cards in another 15 mins at no extra cost. We thanked him and next went to the shop where we had gone earlier in the morning for gift wrapping. The shop-keeper not just guided us to the shop where we could get playing cards (apparently, no prohibition at that shop!) but also asked us how the marriage was, where the marriage was held, et cetera!
We played cards till past midnight. Next day we woke up at 3am and left for Munnar by 4am. We went via Ernakulam and then took NH-49 to Munnar. We reached Munnar at about 11am and there Abhiskek - the guide for our Munnar trek - was ready waiting for us. We had arranged for a 2-day trek thru Kalypso Adventures. On our way, we were joined by Mr.Johnson, a Kerala forest department official who would arrange for our base camp in the Munnar forest reserve. We started the trek from Silent Valley. On our way we stopped at a forest department guest house for lunch. We reached our base camp by about 4:30pm. Surprisingly, even after a 4-5 hr trek, none of us felt even a hint of tiredness. The weather was great, cloudy most of the time, but the main reason to wipe out our tiredness was the continuos stream of water that we encountered all along the trek. The power of chill water to remove tiredness must be experienced to be believed! Each time we encountered water, we spalshed some on our face, took a few sips at times, and this kept us at high spirits all the time.
At the base camp, we were greeted by the support staff who had already reached there by a jeep. Not just had they had put up the camps, they had also made a temporary bathroom for us with a western-style commode! After taking rest at the base camp for about 30 mins during which we were served coffee/tea along with biscuits and bananas, we decided to venture out on a trek on our own, leaving Mr.Johnson and Abhishek back.
We came back to the base camp once it started getting dark. Thatz when I realised the goof-up I had made in not getting warm clothing! Temperature was dropping steeply (it reached approx. 4 degrees celsius later in the night) and I had nothing but 2 T-shirts. The camp fire was the saving grace and any movement more than a couple of meters away from the camp fire reminded me how chilly a hill-station down south can get even in February! We assembled near the camp-fire and got going again with playing cards.
The most pleasant surprise of our trip was to come next. In the middle of the forest, the Kalypso folks had arranged for us a meal fit for more celebrated surroundings. We were served with tomato soup for starters, poori, rice and seven different dishes for main course, and two sweets and sliced pine-apples for dessert! With their highly limited apetite, Sundeep and Saritha could not do complete justice to the meal, although me, Jayant and Adithya relished every bit of it!
Post-dinner session was reserved for playing dumb-charades. Me, Sundeep and Saritha were in one team and Adithya and Jayant formed the other team. What began as time-pass, became pretty competitive as the game went on. When Jayant enacted 'Heera Aur Panna', Adithya got the diamond and the pages part, but could not get itz Hindi equivalent. When I enacted 'Serendipity', Sundeep and Saritha got the Serena and Pity part, but could not put them together. When Sundeep enacted 'Anubhav', me and Saritha got 'aane' (as in elephant in Kannada) and 'bow' (as in the barking sound of the dog), but could not put those two together! The highlight of the game was Adithya's sting act when he was enacting 'Madhumati', something that has to be seen to be appreciated and best left not described. In the middle we had Jayant wondering the connect between paan and banner, when Adithya wanted to indicate 'Banarsi Babu'. We came back from been 2-4 down to level the scores at 4-each. It was already 2am and Mr.Johnson was tired of waiting for us to go to sleep and had gone to sleep already. We decided that we will have just one more round and whoever looses will have to dance to the tunes of the winners.
I gave 'Wajood' for Jayant to enact, and in 4 mins Adithya got the 'Wajoo-' part of it. With 60 seconds remaining, we were sure that he will not get the exact name, but with 10 secs remaining, Adithya somehow stumbled upon the correct word. Now it was my turn to enact, and the movie I got was 'K 19 - The Widow Maker'!!! Quite unbelievably, I was able to enact this and when we got to it in less than 3 mins, I was as wild as winning a world cup!
Next day morning, after the morning ablutions, we had breakfast. In true Kalypso style, the breakfast comprised of corn-flakes, aloo-parathas, bread-butter-jam, oranges, bananas and apples! After the breakfast, we started on our trek back to Silent Valley through the Meesapulimala hills and the shola forests around it. It was about 8:30am when we started trekking and the sun was shining with full vigour. The sunny weather took toll of us, and the trek back to Silent Valley was quite exhausting. With several pit-stops for munching on oranges, dry grapes, dates and banana-sandwich (diligently packed by the Kalypso folks for us), we reached Silent Valley at about 1:30pm.
The trek on day 2 was the tiring part. We had pooris that the Kalypso folks had packed for us for lunch and started on our way to Ernakulam from where was our bus back to Bangalore.
For me the most endearing part of the trip were:
1. The friendly nature of the each and every people we met - right from the person who gift-wrapped for us, our guides during the trek, our can driver, the shop-keeper in the Ernakulam bus-stand from where I bought banana chips - all of them were friendly with us, which was quite a refreshing experience.
2. Things were quite cheap in Kerala - from the hotel we stayed in Alleppey, the rate for the Innova we hired (it was just Rs.7/km), to the cost of the trek - everything were quite cheap!
Overall, it was an exhilarating experience, and the best trek I had till now!
Do not talk much, but feel the spirit within you.
-Swami Vivekananda
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