Kerala: God’s Own Country: Day 2
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Suprabhatam
While Advait and Devendra were sleeping (ok, I wont say snoring) peacefully, I went out for a little early morning walk. The streets were just waking up on this lazy Saturday morning. My first taste of coffee in Kerala was at the main junction, standing along with many lungi-clad people who were giving me strange look. These are pictures of M.G. Road, the central road of Trivandrum
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We were intrigued by the design of the buses. They have no glass windows. Instead there is a thick sheet of cloth that is wrapped and fastened at the top. Simply pulling the lever will unwrap the sheet, so the window is either fully open or fully shut (0 or 1). The bus conductors have electronic machines, which produce electronic tickets. Hmmm.. certainly something that would ease the life of Mumbai’s BEST bus conductors!
We were skeptical about the monsoon, since it supposedly rains continuously during this time in Kerala. Fortunately, today the weather today was bright and after everyone awoke, we promptly decided to see the Kovallam and Kanyakumari beaches.
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Breakfast and remote darshan of the Padmanabhaswamy temple lifted our spirits. A note for the tourists: the city bus station at Trivandrum is a kilometer away from the central bus station, but the walk is pleasurable anyway.
The crescent beaches
Kovalam has 3 main beaches – Hawa, Lighthouse and Ashoka beach. We landed at Hawa (or Eve’s) beach, which is crescent shaped and very beautiful. One can walk along the shore and the rocks to the adjoining Lighthouse beach. The beach is arguably Kerala’s most famous beach and charming place to see the sun dip into Arabian sea.
Instructions at Kovalam in English, Malayalam, Hindi and.. German!
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| Kovalam beach | |
Fishermen weaving their nets
Abu from Mazgaon
We met this guy Abu, who was waiting for a bus to Kanyakumari at the Kovallam bus stand. He was from Mumbai, traveling alone for the first time to Kerala. He gladly joined our gang for the next day.
Delicious Keralite food
We had some lovely traditional Kerala lunch at Trivandrum. They served so many delicacies and rice that we were overwhelmed! Sambar, rasam, curd, daal, vegetables, Payasam, papadam, and many more items we didn’t know the names of. It was tempting to taste fish curry too, but since it was rainy season, we restricted ourselves to vegetarian food.
Food!
Palace of wood
Our next stop was the Padmanabhapuram palace in Tamil Nadu, on our way to Kanyakumari. Built in 1601, this palace was the seat of the Travancore rulers. This is the largest wooden palace in India and is constructed with teak and granite. Guides at various places in the palace give details about various rooms and areas.
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| Padmanabhapuram wood palace and a shrine outside. | |
Kerala and Tamil Nadu
You will notice some difference in the cultures of the two states. People, dressing, language, courtesy and even the cleanliness levels of the cities vary. Don’t be surprised to see 50% of seats in the front portion of the buses in Tamil Nadu reserved for ladies. Women in Tamil Nadu travel a lot – sometimes they outnumber the men! Noticed this trend twice: On the Trivandrum-Kanyakumari route and again on Thekkady-Munnar route. Disclaimer: I have barely traveled into Tamil Nadu and not in a position to form an opinion yet.
Southernmost tip of Indian peninsula!
We hopped from Trivandrum to Thuckalay to Nagercoil and arrived at Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin), which was in neighboring state. The landscape was very pleasant!.
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| Zipping from one little town to the other in state buses | |
It was evident that we would not be able to witness the sunset from the southernmost point of India. Too cloudy. We had no plans for overnight stay, hence could not see other places of tourist interest in the area. Nevertheless, the experience of being at the extreme point was a memorable enough.
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| Kanyakumari | |
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| Bay of Bengal – Indian Ocean – Arabian Sea | |
Journey from the deserted Kanya kumari bus terminal to Trivandrum took over 3 hours. We ate dinner at Trivandrum, quit the room and immediately boarded the next bus to Kottayam, which was a journey of another 3 hours.
In past 24 hours, we had flown from Mumbai (Maharashtra) over the Arabian sea, landed in Trivandrum (Kerala) and saw the sunset at Kanyakumari (Tamil Nadu). Pretty cool, isn’t it?
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Hi Priyank,
Probably my first comment here b’coz I don’t remember leaving a comment before even tho I wanted to.
I have been reading you for sometime now & have read some of your recent posts. They have a unique style of writing.
What’s the connection of not having fish in rainy season since they are also cooked properly? You don’t eat raw fish, do you ?
↵I don’t know what game this is. Afaik you’ve been here a number of times, but with a different alias.
I didn’t eat raw fish back then, but that is not the point. Eating fish during the rainy season is not a good practise since its their breeding time.
↵Oh, probably you are going by the url. Well, looks like you are not a regular reader there and so don’t know that this blog was handed over to me sometime back and now I am the owner.
↵ok, good for you.
↵The food looks yummy!
Signs in German…that’s rare!
↵Hi Zhu, Yeah indeed I was surprised too…. maybe many Germans like to swim there….
↵hi u have nice blog i read it
↵Thanks Jaleel!
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