From
the driver in Udaipur who carried a feedback book with him, to the beaches,
backwaters and tea gardens of Kerala, it has been an year long gap since we
took a vacation from the drudgery of everyday life.
Venturing through Cochin, Cherai, Munnar, Thekkady, Alleppey and Kumarakom, has been a wonderful experience.
Cherai, a town near Cochin in Western Kerala, has some beautiful beaches to offer to its tourists. The Munambam and Kuzhipally beaches line the town on one end and the Chinese fishing nets in its backwaters stand tall on the other end. Sandy beaches of the Arabian Sea have great number of visitors, both local residents and tourists, flocking there at sunset to admire the sea.
The route from Cherai to Munnar offers some beautiful waterfalls like the Cheyppara waterfalls, almost midway. The locals have spice shops lining the roadside throughout the route where they have adjoining spice gardens, the tour costing just INR 100/- per head. Another business that flourishes here is the homemade chocolates.
Tea gardens line both sides of the hills as you enter Munnar and they continue to smile at you throughout Munnar. Though the Madupetty dam and Echo point are the main tourist sites at Munnar, I feel the entire town is a place of significance. The mountains are covered with tea plantations, providing scenic beauty that provides for beautiful photography. The tea museums/ factories provide an insight into the transformation of fresh green leaves into tea that gets served to us in its glorious form in tea cups. It is a wonder that a tea tree lasts forever, an elixir of life. The tea trees of Munnar are now 135 years young.
Our
journey continued through the tea plantations to Thekkady, a destination 90 kms
from Munnar. Cardamom, pepper, rubber and coffee plantations kept us awed
through the 90 kms stretch to Thekkedy. The Periyar Tiger Reserve lent a serene
backdrop for our walk through the jungle periphery where monkeys and langurs
outnumbered the tourists. At one point I almost lost my camera to one of the
monkeys that strolled towards me.
The
next destination, Alleppey, has beautiful backwaters and beaches to offer
satiation to our wanderlust. Alleppey or Allapuzha as it is called by the
locals is a difficult to pronounce name. Pronunciation has to be perfect like a
musical note. Incorrect pronunciation is like a note going off that hurts the
ear. So I tried my best to pronounce Allapuzha and succeeded in getting the 'zha' correct. We went boating in a
'Shikara' for three hours in the backwaters, an augustine experience. The red lighthouse
near the beach is blocked from view by the railroad construction which is in
progress nearby, but we managed to drive up close to it to take a picture.
The
last stop was at Kumarakom where we skipped the boating in the backwaters. Our
cottage in the resort overlooked the lake and we spent the evening watching
fish and ducks swim in the water. We drove down to Cochin where we took a
motorboat ride in the Vembanad Lake for about an hour and a half. The mangroves
provided us with a good sighting of Kingfishers, Cranes, African crows and some
other birds. This culminated our twelve day vacation in Kerala in the
magnificent beauty of God's own country.
