Kerala Trip By Road

We have been planning to go to Kerala but the distance always kept us just contemplating about it. Like everything in life, I believe that traveling is also destined. Only God decides when you will travel and where. In Kerala, we thought of hitting Munnar first and depending on the place we would decide what will be the next destination. We generally don’t properly plan our vacations and do not book the hotels. My experience says in any tourist location there is at least one room available at any given day. But yes, we do take our bedsheets and blankets, incase we get some not so good place to stay.

First day 4th April 2008-We started on a Saturday morning at around 7:00 am. In afternoon we stopped at a small place called Annur in Tamil Nadu to eat. This was a very small hotel which was serving meals. I am calling it hotel and not restaurant because in small places they call eatries as hotel even if they do not offer accomodation. The places where you can stay are called lodges. Oh God, Travel guru started with her preaching. Getting back to the hotel, we ate meals and luckily unlike ambience the food was quiet tasty and the filter coffee, wow! I had it after a long time. In Bangalore, especially the area where I live we do not have any good darshinis( South Indian fast food eatry) and do not get good filter coffee. Filter coffee is one of the many things I like about south India.

After filling our tummy to the brim, we started and at around 4’oclock we reached Pollachi from where we had to take a right to reach Munnar. The complete stretch to our surprise was a jungle area and the forest department does not allow entering that area after 6:00 pm. Luckily, we were on time although we had not planned it and we were unaware. We could have hardly seen one vehicle in the stretch. We drove as slow as possible, to enjoy the place and the pure atmosphere. At places like this my husband tells me to breath as much, it would purify the impure lungs which always breaths in polluted city of Bangalore. No No, I don’t hate Bangalore. Despite all problems I love Bangalore but you definitely need gateways on regular intervals. Back to the mesmerizing forest, the beauty was overwhelming and we did not want this journey to end. You can even have an encounter a few animals also. The wind was just cool enough and the silence and the greenery. That’s the beauty of nature and god’s own country. Yes, the stretch is in Kerala.

We reached Munnar at around 7:00 pm and started our search for hotel. This time for a change we had taken a list of hotels at the place. It makes it easier to ask people the directions using the hotels names. We stayed at ‘westwood riverside’. They had complementary dinner and breakfast too. The hotel rooms were quiet good and the ambience too. The hotel was actually a riverside hotel. You can dine beside the river. The whole scenery behind the hotel made it look like Europe. We were tired after a whole day of driving so we headed to the bed.

Second Day 4th April 2008- In morning, instead of ordering the tea from the hotel, we decided to roam around outside the hotel and have tea at some small stall. I like the early morning activities on a hill station wit smoke coming out from some small shops and every one starting the business for the day. We also got a chance to talk to some local people and asked about site seeing places. The most important of that was the jungle through which we had come. We decided to spend the time till afternoon seeing places around and then we would head towards our next destination. The Munnar is indeed a very beautiful hill station and I loved the place. We went to see some points common of all hill stations, ate fresh carrots washed in streams flowing from hills, took some photographs and started for our next destination and that was Thekaddy which is around 90kms from Munnar.

At around 2:00 pm, we reached thekaddy and had our lunch there only in a gujarati hotel. Then inquired about places where we could stay and after lot of discussions we thought we should stay in the government hotel amidst the Periyar forest area and not outside as that’s what we came to experience. There are 3 hotels of different categories provide by the government. We settled for the economy one as it was good enough. This again had complementary dinner and breakfast. After keeping our baggage’s, we booked our tickets for boat ride on the Periyar lake for the next morning and then went to the lakeside which was close to the hotel and sat there enjoying the sunset and the beauty of the lake. After its dark, it is not allowed to stay outside the hotel premises. But from inside also you can feel the mysterious world of the forest with lots of different sounds coming from all sides and yet there is silence. The heart is silent and at peace.

Third Day 5th April 2008-We had taken the boat ride tickets for earliest possible as this is the time when you can see more animals or another time is just before sunset. The Boat ride was a memorable one. It actually was a Boat safari. From inside the lake, branches of trees were peeping and you can see huge birds sitting on them. Then the boat will take you from in between two cliffs full of vegetation and sometimes at some bottom of cliffs you can see bunch of animals, playing with water. We had a glance of elephants, Seal, Bisons. This experience was one of its kinds and don’t think I have come across any such place like this before. We human destroy these beautiful jungles and make our life complex and then yen for such places where they can get solace.

After coming back from boat safari, we took our breakfast and then started for our next destination “Kumarakom”.On the way I got to know that former Prime minister “Atal Bihari Vjapayee” also used to come here only for holidays. We reached Kumarakom at around 1:30pm. Roads in Kerala is so good, the drive is never tiring. And both the sides of road is full of vegetation and unless you are directly under sun you won’t feel the heat.
It took us around an hour to fix a houseboat. We bargained with the houseboat owner and we got a good deal as it was already afternoon and this was not peak season. The houseboat owner was a one sweet guy. Before boarding the boat, he took us to buy fresh fish and other food items. We got lobsters too which a fresh catch at that shop and it was so cheap. A cook and a boat rider also accompanied us on the boat. I was so excited once the boat started. I was acting like a Kid. As it was too hot, I decided of taking bath and the feeling of taking bath on a moving houseboat was amazing. Then we had the sumptuous lunch. While writing this my mouth is full of water thinking of that food. We kept moving in never ending water flanked by coconut trees. And if we passed by another houseboat we all waived hands. Everyone is so happy being on it that it the action happens without much of a thought. The Boat ultimately stopped in evening and we got down having walk in a coconut garden. We did fishing for sometime while listening to music. These houseboats are fully equipped with music system, Television. We had dinner and then slept.


Fourth Day 6th April 2008 I woke up pretty early morning as I wanted to enjoy the morning beauty of the place and take a few snaps. And yes, I got the best pics of my life. Life had already started. I sat there for long just looking at the activities and thinking that for some people life is still simple and close to nature and like us who for complete communicate only with a box considered to be more intelligent than us. I hoped the time to stop there and don’t have return back to the busy life again. The silence was ultimately broken when my husband woke up. We had tea and breakfast and after a while it was time to bid adieu to our lovely home for a day. All good things come to an end. We had already decide to head for alleppey next. We went to the beach at alleppey which was pretty good and also took a2 hours boat ride in the alleppey back waters. This was more close to what we had seen of Television.Then we started our journey back and our original plan was to halt at thrissur but somehow we did not and headed to Coimbatore. And next day back to Bangalore.