On Wednesday evening the 4 of us in
Bangalore
left for Kerala by coach. This journey being only 12 hours was really
easy compared to the train ride…except for the driver decided to put a
grade c Bollywood movie on in which only actors with loud high pitched
voices were cast in.
When we arrived we found that there are 2 Keralas. Not the rich and the poor
(the communist party who rule Kerala has tried their best to avoid that) but between
the ugly and the beautiful. Ernakulem (where are hotel was) was definitely in the
ugly Kerala. Fortunately for us though we were a short boat ride to Fort Kochi which
has such a great atmosphere, and Jew Town!!! Just being in the atmosphere, although
overwhelmingly crowded by tourists was great.
Out Itinerary went something like this…
Day 1 – recover and fort Kochi
Day 2 – Go to isolated tourist village and take private boat ride around backwaters
Day 3 – Visit elephant sanctuary and have brunch with crazy French man. Ride an
elephant! Day 4 – Backwaters all day (by boat)
Day 5 – Beach!!!!!
I could’ve narrated it all through, but it would have got a bit boring. The elephant
ride was best experience so far…a little odd at first but just felt great. I’m not
sure
why it’s any different to riding any other animal (I haven’t really ridden
any other animals actually) but just the novelty of it all was incredible. The backwater
trip was also very interesting. Other than being extremely peaceful we found out
a lot about Kerala. It has almost 100% literacy!!! This is amazing considering some
children have to travel over an hour to get to school as they live on different
islands. We also saw the industries at work, seeing how small islands have factories
to make medicines in anti malarial pills!
Kerala in short was stunning.
A little too hot, but other than that pretty good.
I guess for me it was great because of the large variety of fish curries...which
I tried a fair few of.
Will xx