Periyar Tiger Reserve - the last day of our journey

Kerala Tour - Munnar

We started for Munnar from Kochi at 8.30 in the morning in a hired Indica car. We planned to have breakfast enroute.But as it was a sunday, hardly any restaurant was found open.At about 10.30, we could locate one and had Puri Sabzi and coffee. The quality was not that good but no choice!

We reached Munnar at about 12 Noon and moved to our Hotel Emmel Dwellings located near KTDC Tea County. After freshening up, we had our Lunch in a nearby vegetarian restaurant, and went for a half day sightseeing in Munnar.

                                                                Our Hotel at Munnar


Our first spot was Tea Museum. Locally it is known as Tata Tea Museum, but Tata Tea had handed over the company management to the workers long back and it is now being managed by the employees quite efficiently.

We had a cup of piping hot complimentary tea, saw a documentary on the history of tea plantation in Munnar Hills and took a tour of the tea factory.

Next we visited one park and a view point. Our last visit of the day was Atukkad Waterfalls. We had to go down on hilly roads to reach the place. The waterfalls was really worth visiting and we took a number of photographs there.

Kochi Tour

On our first day at Kochi,we left the hotel early,had breakfast in a nearby restaurant and went to IMA House near Nehru stadium to attend Indian Public Health Association (IPHA) Annual National Conference organised by Kerala state branch. Since IPHA is headquartered in Kolkata,many of our colleagues & friends from Kolkata also went to Kochi to attend the conference.
We met Rajkumar of South Eastern Railway.He is very friendly and his humourous anecdotes made our Kochi stay really enjoyable.
Rajumar arranged a vehicle for his use at Kochi and we used the same for sightseeing in and around the city.
On the first day of the conference,we decided to take a tour of the city in the post lunch period.We visited Travancore kings palace which is now converted into a museum,the first Jewish synagogue in India,the Portugese church once visited by Vasco Da Gama and having his tomb and lastly Fort Kochi.We liked the sea front at Fort Kochi very much.The vast sea with ships,chinese fishing nets,local ferry services and setting sun in the horizon gave the entire area a very enchanting look!We spent considerable time in the area,travelled in local ferry and finally came down to Marine Drive.Marine Drive overlooking Kochi dock with malls and markets nearby is a favorite place for the locals.There are two overbridges built like fishing nets on two ends of marine drive,which when illuminated give the area an unique identity.
We later on visited the local market to buy famous Kochi spices,Kerala Sari etc.
On the next two days apart from attending the conference,we visited Hill Palace and the museum.On the way back,we witnessed a local festival with decorated elephants.
For conference dinner,we visited Bolgatty Palace,a heritage property of Kerala Tourism.Its an imposing palace overlooking the sea.Cultural programmes like Kathakali dance and local martial art demonstrations were arranged before dinner.But untimely torrential rain disrupted both the programme and dinnner.We tooke refuge in an annexe bulding before returning to the hotel late ay night.Since we were scheduled to start for Munnar the next morning,we quickly packed our luggage and retired for the night.

Sun sets at Kerala Backwater

View of Kerala Backwater

                                           

A part of Hill Palace, Kochi

Arabian Sea from Fort Kochi

Munnar - the tea country

Munnar is an hill statiion with plenty of tea gardens.The tea gardens are beautifully landscaped,difficult to find parallel anywhere else in India.

Fort Kochi Beach

Fort Kochi beach

Fort Kochi

Fort Kochi Seafront with Chinese Fishing Net, country 

boats and big ships - all co-existing in the same frame.

Kochi Tour

The boat in which we took our backwater cruise from
Kollam to Allepy.

Kovalam Beach

Kovalam is one of the most famous beaches in India and draws large number of tourists every year,from India and abroad alike.We visited Kovalam on a february afternoon with blazing sun and busloads of inland tourists were sufficient to dampen our spirits.But Kovalam is Kovalam as far as natural beauties are concerned which is aptly proved by this photograph of the beach which I took against a setting sun.

Natural beauty of Kerala backwater

The above picture tries to protray the sublime beauty of Kerala backwater.

I travelled through Kerala backwater twice,once during Chrismas holiday in 2003,when during a family vacation,we had the opportunity to sail in a cruise boat from Aleppy to Kollam.This time,while attending IPHACON 2012 at Kochi,I had the opportunity again to revisit the same route from the reverse direction,that is from Kollam to Aleppy.

The experience this time matches with the previous one,the natural scenary is the same pristine & sublime as before.People and their way of life are tne same.Only tourism infrastructure improved a lot.number of foreign tourists are more and houseboats can be spotted anywhere and everywhere.

We may compare our owm Sunderban with Kerala backwater.But our place will remain a distant cousin to Kerala in terms of tourism facilities and marketing.Though natural beauty is no less at Sunderban,iy can not compete with Kerala as accessibility,inftastructure and marketing are the areas where where we let it down totally.

In a lighter vein,the only experience we could not have,was spending a night in a houseboat in backwater!May be it will be possible next time.

Kerala Houseboat

During our backwater cruise from Kollam to Aleppy,we came across hundreds of houseboats,mainly hired by foreign tourists.The picture above shows one such houseboat.

Backwater tour in Kerala

Next day we had to get up very early in the morning to catch Jana Shatabdi Express which leaves Trivandrum Central station at 6 AM.Since daylight appears in Kerala at around 6.45 AM,the task becomes very diffi ult.Anyway,we could manage to board the train in time and reached Kollam at around 7 AM.After taking breakfast in station cafeteria,we went to the boat jetty to book our cruise ticket.Since our boat was scheduled to start at 10.30,we decided to hire an auto rickshaw and visit important places in Kollam.

Kollam has a few very beautiful beaches apart from lighthouse,fishermens colony,fish market and temples.After a satisfying Kollam tour,we came back to the jetty to board our boat.

The boat was two-storied with an upper deck having great view.We decided to spend our time there in the company of great Kerala backwater landscape.The tourists availing the cruise were mostly foreigners with a few Indians like us.

The boat started on dot and cruised through beautiful lakes and backwater.The natural beauty was enchanting.We passes hundreds of traditional houseboats with foreign tourists on board on our way.

We had our lunch and tea in beautiful backwater settings.We also passes Ashram of Mata Amrita,where many of our co travellers got down probably to have an idea about Indian spiritualituy.

We reached Allapuza at around 6.30 PM,again hired a three wheeler to visit the local beach and managed to catch a train to Ernakulam.We reached Ernakulam at 10 PM,checkex into Shalimar Residency,our hotel,had our dinner in a nearby eatery and retired for the night.

Kerala Tour Photo

Kollam is a town in Kerala,which is not very famous in tourism circles,apart from one of the basess for backwater cruises,has a number of beautiful beaches.The accompanying pnoto taken at a Kollam beach will prove my point.

Kerala Tour Photo

Light House of Kollam, Kerala

Kerala Tour

A photo of backwater taken from the floating restaurant 

at Veli Tourist Village in Trivandrum

Kerala Tour - February:Part II (Contd.)

After visiting Padmanabhaswami Temple, we came back to our hotel at Trivandrum and retired for the day after an early dinner as we had to catch an early train to Kollam the next day for our backwater tour.

                                 Napier museum in Trivandrum

Kerala Tour - February,2012:Part II

Our plane landed at 10 AM.From Trivandrum airport,we took a prepaid taxi for Rs 350 to Jash Hotel located near Railway Station.The hotel facilities were a little dissapointing, but as we had only one day to spend there,we did not bother about it and quickly left the hotel for sightseeing after a cup of tea each.
We booked a taxi for Rs 800.The driver was an elderly person with good knowledge of the citu and its people.First he took us to the Museum,zoo and art gallery.There was also an acquarium in the same complex but we left without visiting it.We liked the art gallery as it displayed a mumber of paintings of Raja Ravi Varma.We were not interested to see the zoo and skipped it.
As it was lunch time by then,the driver took us to a canteen meant for government employees of PWD Depatment.The food was typical Kerala style with local boilec rice,sambar,fried sea fish among other delicacies.We liked the food and proceeded to Veli back water tourist village as our next destination.The village was worth visiting with facilities of boating in the backwater.But as it was very hot outside,we preferred not to go for boating and instead spent some time in the floating restaurant sipping good quality tea.We next visited Sankhamukham and Kovalam beaches.While the former beach was unremarkable,Kovalam beach is too famous to ignore.It was crowded with tourists from all over the country.We spent some time on the beach before moving on to famous and rich Padmanabhaswami temple.We had to take off our dresses and cover ourselves with dhotis hired from a local shop to visit the Lord,whose idol is.made up of gold.We came back to hotel after visiting Padmanabhaswami Temple to have an early dinner as we had to catch the next morning's Jana Shatabdi Express to Kollam for backwater tour.

Kerala Tour - February,2012 (Part I)

This year (2012) Indian Public Health Asso iation (IPHA) organised its Annual National Conference at Kochi in Kerala.Being a life member of the assotiation,I had the oppurtunity to visit Kerala on this occasion.Susanta Mandal and Sankar Roy,both long time friends and colleagues, decided to accompany me in this tour.We made the programme in such a way that within a span of 8 days,we shall visit famous Kerala beaches, a beautiful hill station and a world famous tiger reserve.

We started our journey in tne first week of February from Dumdum Airport to board Indigo flight to Trivandrum via Bangalore.Since it is very difficult to get taxi to Dumdum at 3 AM from Thakurpukur,I had to prebook a Kolkatakab taxi.The AC taxi reached my home in time and dropped me at airport by 4 AM.Mandal and Sankar took another such cab from Howrah and joined my taxi near Race Course to travel together to Dumdum.

The air journey to Trivandrum was on time excepting the fact that we had to carry our snacks on board as it was an Indigo low cost flight.

Kerala Tour

I recently visited Kochi and some other parts of Kerala while attending IPHA Annual conference.I shall post the travel diary from today.If it is possible,I shall try to include some photographs of my Kerala tour in the blog.The travel diary will be divided into parts,each one to be uploaded daily.

Evening Walk

Blogging while walking!Exactly so.Walking with Tinny before dinner in front of the house.Retired from walking due to leg pain while Tinny continued.I am standing idle and blogging through mobile!

Daily commuting from Thakurpukur to Kanchrapara

Since being transferred and posted at Kanchrapara in August last year,it became a daily chore to travel the distance from Thaurpukur to Kanchrapara and back taking at least 5-6 hours per day.Of course,there lies both positive and negative sides to it.On the negative side,it is little tiring every day to travel the distance in overcrowded emu trains and to leave house a little earlier.On the positive side, it gives me time to read more and to listen to good music on the move.I can also improve my driving skill as I need to drive my car daily.

 

Today I have activated services through which I can post directly in my blog through email.

From today onwards, I shall try to utilise this blog as some sort of diary of my thoughts,activities,beliefs etc on a daily basis. May be it will be only one sentence a day. But so be it.