Advertisement
Published: September 9th 2009
(by Kerry )
So, after leaving the Himalayas we headed back down to Delhi to take a flight to Kerala for some serious seafood consumption and chill out beach time.
Cochin (BI - 1ish)
Managed to arrive in Cochin on Friday 1st August, officially an alcohol free day across the state so post-travel beers were out of the question unfortunately. How gutted were we!!! Apparently the 1st of every month is the same. Weirdos!
Cochin was ok but to be brutally honest we were a little under-whelmed by it - it was OK, just not the amazing place that we'd read about. We're not sure if this reaction was the cause but we came down with a case of travellers' blues while we were there. We'd been very active for a couple of months and had headed south as we felt that we needed a break. Getting the blues soon after arrival threw us a little bit and we spent most of our time in Cochin in a state of bluesy indecision: Should we head to the mountains for adventure or the beach for relaxation? We just didn't know what we wanted! We decided finally to head
for the beach on our last morning there.
Anyway, whining aside, whilst we were in Cochin we didn't just sit moping about for 2 days. We went on a day trip to the backwaters on a hand punted boat loaded with other tourists (yawn - 3 hours in the afternoon sitting in a cane chair going at the speed of a lame duck became a little painful) & stopping off at some villages to see coconut fibre rope making (very interesting) & spices (quite interesting), went to an evening Kathakali show (mixed reactions, Kerry: boring except for the interesting & educational demonstation at the start, Graham: pretty cool, performers were impressively dedicated to their art) & had some lovely south Indian fish dishes (curries & tandoori fish: yum-yum all round!).
Kovalam (BI - 0.67)
On the way to the beach we totally confused the train ticket blokey with our wish to upgrade our dirt-cheap on-the-day-walk-up ticket which was only valid in the single, chicken-coop-like 2nd class carriage at the end of the train in order to sit in the half full air-conditioned sleeper carriage. It's fine to do this but I don't think he'd come across anyone
wanting to before so insisted that we needed to move for a few minutes until he understood our request: we spelled it out for him. "Can we pay extra to sit here?" He didn't understand our initial request to "upgrade our ticket".
So.. we arrived in Kovalam after dark and managed to get a pretty good discount on the cheaper of the hotels in our book with a pool: 500 rupees a night with breakfast included (about 6.25 GBP) when his rate card said 1200 or so (can't remember exactly) but we had to promise not to tell our neighbours. We got up early the next morning and noticed that the pool wasn't very clean & didn't look like anyone was coming to clean it so we headed out to find a better one before breakfast. When we returned we realised just how right we were to move as the previously secluded, albeit dirty pool, area had men shimmying up the surrounding coconut trees to hack at them. There were fallen and falling coconuts everywhere (including the pool), so not only was it overrun with prying eyes it was noisy, more dirty and actually dangerous to hang around! So
we sat down for our free breakfast then swiftly checked out and went to a much nicer place around the corner which had a lovely clean pool for just an extra 300 rupees a night.
Despite the beach itself being a bit dirty and out of bounds for sun-bathing (due to groups of male Indian tourists shamelessly gawping & taking photos of the one or two bikini clad ladies that dared to brave it) we ended up staying in Kovalam 2 nights more than planned (5 in total) and spent most of our time in and around the lovely secluded pool area which we never had to share with more than 2 others. Notably 2 nice English student boys that we were to bump into again later.. Other highlights of Kovalam were the decent selection of beach-front restaurants serving nice fresh seafood & a walk through the nearby fishing village to an almost secluded beach where we managed to have a quick paddle among the waves before a group of young boys started running towards us, at which point we rushed back to our bags and covered (Kerry) up. Also walked through a nearby fishing village and got to
Making coconut rope
in villiage, backwaterswatch the (100s of) villagers haggle with fisherman as they landed the day's catch - was manic and very fishy! I don't think many tourists venture this far from Lighthouse Beach (the main strip in Kovalam) - we certainly got some strange looks.
Alleppey/Alapuzzha (BI - not tested)
We just stopped off here overnight to break the journey to Kumily up and take a Rough Guide recommended local boat journey through the backwaters. Didn't see much of the town itself but the backwater trip was most enjoyable and despite an unpleasant night in a cockroach infested room (thank the powers that be - or Steve & Kate Hepton! - for our Mosquito net which we used to create a safe-haven) were glad that we'd stopped off there. Backwater trip on the local ferry (cost approx 20p each) in this area much better than the one we paid for in Cochin (cost approx too much to think about).
Kumily & Periyar (Tiger - yeah right) Nature Reserve (BI - 1.10)
This, along with the Kovalam pool, was the highlight of our time in Kerala. We spent 3 nights in the lovely little town of Kumily which is
Backwaters
tourists crammed into a small boat for a quick punt.. right next to Periyar nature reserve. We again managed to get a bargain on the accommodation. We stayed in a "guest house cum hotel cum internet cafe" where the owner booked 2 trips for us and got us discount on both (we'd been to the gov. tourist office for info so knew the official prices).
The first trip we did on the afternoon that we arrived was to "Elephant Junction" http://www.elephantjunction.com/ where we did the Two and a half Hour Programme which included:
• One hour ride with spice garden visit
• Timber Dragging
• Commands and communication
• Elephant Bath
• Elephant Shower
What magnificent beasts they are! We had a brilliant male elephant whose name I wrote down but can't find 😞 The whole thing was amazing and best described by photos so check em out..
The next morning we were up at 5.30am to start our jungle jeep safari day in Periyar. We shared a jeep & driver with a nice German fellow called Michael who'd arrived in a taxi the previous night from the coast.
As an aside we learned a valuable lesson here as our hotel owner told us before we set off in the
morning that he'd charged Michael a little over the full price of the large room that he'd shown us the previous day (and offered us at a 25% discount) so he was paying 1,100 rupees (about 13.00 GBP) for his room whereas we'd got a small room for just 300 rupees (just under 4 quid). He asked us not to tell Michael how much we were paying but Graham didn't hear and spilled the proverbial beans when Michael later asked. He wasn't too concerned though so it was all ok.
Our jungle jeep safari included a few hours bombing around in the jeep looking for animals in the hills - mostly deer and buffalo but a quick (illegal) detour off-road meant that we got to spot some wild elephants, too.
We then took a 2 hour hike through the wildlife park where we we re lucky enough to spot a second group of wild elephants (although by this time we were elephant-ed out - one of the guides looked genuinely surprised when we refused to run over the brow of a hill in order to catch a site of them before they disappeared). Scenery was very beautiful and
guide very informative. Unfortunately it was prime leach season and, despite anti-leach socks, we got quite few of the little buggers attaching themselves affectionately to our skin. Most were easily removed with salt, but one managed to secrete itself underneath Graham's rucksack and stayed attached to his back for the entire afternoon. Only at the end of the day, when rucksack was removed to reveal a blood-stained shirt, was the (by now very plump) guest removed and, ahem, dealt with. Left a massive bruise though.
Finally, took a row boat out to a nearby waterfall before heading home for well earned beers and curry.
So in summary ; Kerala - nice, not quite as amazing as we were expecting but we had just come off the back of 5 weeks of hell-for-leather travelling as comparison. People friendly, food good, time there relaxing, best bit was the hills rather than the backwaters.
And then we headed to Tamil Nadu......
Advertisement
Tot: 0.364s; Tpl: 0.022s; cc: 8; qc: 56; dbt: 0.069s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
anonymous
non-member comment
Know what you mean about Cochin - not much there apart from those fishing nets. I went to that Kathikali place too and was a bit disturbed by it - that stuff they put in their eyes to make them crazy red and then the weird actions that take years to learn... trust you not to be impressed!!!