Kerala

This was a 5-day trip back in May. Kerala had always been on my list since I moved to Bangalore and during the intern couple of years back, I could only go as far as Calicut and Wayanad. This was time to go real south and it’s great we went as close as 80 kms from the Kanyakumari. Left Bangalore on a Wednesday night on a bus to Kottayam, around 600 kms. I saw my first Malayalam movie in the bus which had a couple of hilarious but vulgar scenes. Kumarakom, around 15 kms from Kottayam, is the place to go for backwaters. There’s a very big lake called Vembanadu lake where there are houseboats to stay and people come from both Kumarakom side and Allepy side. The timing was good for us as this was not really the peak tourist season. We got a nice luxurious 3-bedroom boat at the price of a 1-bedroom one because the guy didn’t have the smaller one available. We got on the houseboat around afternoon and the plan was to have a ride till it was evening (almost 3 hours) after which the houseboat was stationary till the morning. The houseboat had a kitchen and the meals we got were pretty good. I distinctly remember having idiyappam for the breakfast the next day, which tasted great. It is steamed noodles made of rice. There was also a bird sanctuary on the way to the lake from the point of boarding. Though we couldn’t get in the sanctuary, it was a pleasant site from outside and there were many varieties of colorful birds flying around. There were three guys on the houseboat including the chef. I found out in the evening that they had a simple fishing tackle and gave it a shot. Although I couldn’t catch a fish, I got a couple almost in the hook. They were keenly watching an IPL match between Kochi Tuskers and Bangalore Royal Challengers after dinner. Next morning, we got out of the houseboat in Kumarakom and went back to Kottayam. There was a big church, out of the lot of churches one can find anywhere in Kerala, on the way where we stopped for a while.

The next place was Periyar National park, almost a 4 hour journey from Kottayam and towards Tamil Nadu border. The reason I was attracted to Periyar was that unlike other national parks, it had a big lake right in the middle and one can actually have a safari on a bamboo raft as opposed to jeep safari, which is very common. I usually try and keep inter-city traveling to night during a trip for the simple reason that it saves time and not every route is that scenic. But this one was actually a good route, through the Western Ghats and overlooking kilometers of tea plantations. We had reservations in the government guest house, which was inside the boundaries of national park. Reached around 4 PM, purchased some jelly, chocolates etc from the nearby town and looked around for safari options. While the day-long bamboo raft was not a surprise, night trek through the jungle was a new thing that popped up and we couldn’t resist but go for it. The trek is conducted by the forest officials wherein there is a guide and an armed security guy leading a group of maximum 6 people. Nobody else registered for 10 PM to 1 AM trek which we picked. We roamed around for an hour or so before getting back to the guest house and the dusk time view of the lake was amazing. Having seen the lake from a distance, we decided to go closer and to our surprise, just on the other side, there was a group of elephants hanging out. The place was very quiet and beautiful, the forest very dense and the lake was a great value addition.

I remember a big stag crossed our way when we were about to reach the guest house where we had an awesome dinner buffet and set out for the night trek at 10. For the first time, I saw special socks for protection against leeches. With 4 torches and a fully loaded gun, we roamed around in partial moonlight for almost two and a half hours. It was great fun: we flashed our torches on tons of deer, woke up a porcupine that looked like a stone when sleeping, saw a rabbit and couple of bison. And, of course, there were all sorts of scary sounds from everywhere. The bamboo raft ride next day was equally good. It was actually a combination of rafting and trekking through the jungle. We didn’t get to see whole new types of animals during that except some fancy frogs and birds. I was impressed by the way our guide guessed the presence of an elephant group after he saw elephant shit and in the next 10 minutes, actually he led us to two jumbos. We left for our next destination, beaches near Trivandrum, around 6 in the evening. One of the great things about the trip was that it only rained once when we were travelling from Periyar to Trivandrum in the taxi.

Reached Varkala beach in around 5 hours and stayed in a small hotel for the night. Got up around 4:30 in the morning to go to the beach and spent couple of hours there. Varkala beach, with a cliff running parallel to the beach, is different from other Kerala beaches. It’s very shallow, particularly in contrast to the Kovalam beach, where we went next. Took a local train from Varkala to reach Trivandrum, 12 kms from Kovalam beach. Since we were at the Kovalam beach around noon, it was very hot. I got a good tan there which was notable for a couple of weeks after the trip too. This brought us to the end and the way back consisted of a 3 hour train journey to Kottayam and 12 hour bus journey from there to Bangalore.