Blogs from Alleppey, Kerala, India, Asia - page 15

Kerala - also known as God's Own Country (along with Yorkshire in England) and they both are ! We are now plotting our own route and are finding the most wonderful places. After arriving in Cochin, we picked up a pre paid taxi at the airport and drove 55 kms for 10 pounds to a homestay. We stayed at Olivipe Homestay which was great and the family really hospitable. Deep in the heart of the backwaters, it is so perfect that you could't dream it up. Prawn farms and lazy canoeing with coconut groves and joyous local festivals plus caparisoned elephants galore. The people are lovely and Kerala is one large continuous village with nice houses and sleek cattle. Carol milked a cow yesterday and will be persuading Nicky Rowles that we could house one with ... read more

Well, we've landed in Paradise. Kerala is awesome. Best food on earth, beautiful country. I want to retire here. Left Kumily on Jan 3rd to go down to Alleppey. Stopped at a tea plantation and saw the tea factory. Pretty neat stuff. Gave an old crippled begger woman Rs. 100. Good karma eh? Aroma of the tea was amazing. Unfortunately they use tons of wood to roast the tea, hopefully they're not cutting down virgin forests for this. That's my tree hugger speach. The drive from Kumily and the cardomon hills to the coast is amazing. Starts with tea plantations everywhere. Then the hills get real steep and we begin the decent. Sheer cliffs, terraced gardens everywhere. Crazy roads. Stopped at a local restaurant that the driver picked. We ate "meals" again. Cost to stuff our ... read more

Next stop - Alleppey. we were in 2 minds whether to go to Kollam or Alleppey to sample the backwaters as we heard they were both brill but Alleppey was more touristy and Kollam was not and had more natural beauty. so going for au natural we opted for Kollam, but changed our minds very last min to head to Alleppey (as pursuded by locals) - good choice tho! Alleppey is a lovely little town with lots of workshops and factories and old men fixing stuff on the street. it wasnt touristy at all - didnt see any westeners at all in town! all the children were so polite and enthusiastic and ran up to us shouting 'Hi'! not asking for pens or anything they just wanted to say hey - so sweet! we were like ... read more

I've almost reached the end of my stay here, in the south, in Kerela. Beautiful Kerela where banana trees are abundantly available and coconuts are as far as your backyard. The people here have been nothing but kind and accepting of me, if not isn awe at times. Everywhere I go, I have an audience that is just dying to test out their English-mostly with "hello's" and "how do you do's". Kerela has been my first introduction to India, and Alleppey, it's Embassador. I dont' think that the big cities will have it's 'at home' charm and charisma. The big citiies, as with most big cities, will be largely overwhelming, perhaps cold, and definatley not as personable! My neighbour here who's family rents a flat (if you can call two rooms of an old house that), ... read more

so apparantly as I was going to upload some pictures for the Tamil Nadu blog, I got a virus. My card reads as empty, however there are pictures there...you can see them on the camera, but cannot open them on the computer...if i reformat the card, will I loose all the pics? I have walked around aimlessly, trying to find a shop that can help..noone knows what to do? Ian, if you are reading this, I know you wont' be in Bangalore on the Thursday that I arrive, this thursday, to sunday...do you have any colleages or suggestions of what to do? they said a data recovery centre will cost me tons...should I just leave the card, and retrieve pics at home? it sucks as there was only about 100 pics on it (beautiful too!) and ... read more