Trip – Allepey and Trivandrum

Prequels to this post : Part1 Part2 Part3

I am glad that almost all of you rejoiced in Munnar in this virtual trip. 🙂 Continuing to the next part, I would be glad to present you this part covering Allepey and Trivandrum.

After having the morning tea at Munnar, a downhill snaking road awaited us. The roads were very good, but narrow. I had to undergo the torment of a head spinning and stomach churning sensations in this part of the journey. When the snaking eventually reduced, I could take in some air and be normal again! We reached the Allepey by about 1pm and had lunch. Even this day, we’d been prey to a breakfast-less morning as we could not find any place serving food made with refined oil. However, upon reaching the place, we were done with lunch at a pretty good hotel.

Actually called Alapuzha, Allepey is a place with backwaters of the Arabian sea. The lagoons formed are huge; so much so, that one might easily miss the fine line of land seperating the water and sky, near the horizon. The boat in which we were supposed to take a tour of the backwaters was pre-booked which avoided any bargaining and fixing of the deal. Describing the place is beyond my vocabulary. I’m letting my camera speak with your eyes about it. 🙂

Trip summary!

Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, didn’t have as much natural beauty as other places. But it offered a very good chance for enjoyment. We reached the place at around 1145 pm.
(One of my friend Ravikiran was more than happy to reach there coz, he’d spent the 1st of every month recently at each of the capital cities of South India. Aug 1st – Hyderabad, Sep 1st – Bangalore, Oct 1st – Chennai, Nov 1st – Trivandrum 😀 )
First thing in the following morning, we went to one of the most famous temple of south India, the Anantha Padmanabha Swami Temple. Finishing the darshan, the breakfast job was taken care of. Next up, we went to the Trivandrum Zoo, one of the biggest I’ve seen.

After a triring time at the zoo (where i could capture the pics of around 75 odd animal species), we headed to the most exciting part of the trip – The Kovalam Beach! The speciality of this beach is that, even after going away from the coastline into the sea for about 100 ft, the water was at my waist level. The best part was swimming in the sea, for which I’d to go into the sea till the water was at my chest level (the dist from the shore could easily be 150 ft.) Playing with the ball has been, and is still a very popular game while playing in shallow waters. This was our source of entertainment and excitement too. The tiredness of playing in water for a greater part of the evening did little to bring down the energy level.

Playing in the sand like 10 yr old kids is a time worth remembering for the years to come in my life! After this, the beach-side snacks were the next stop, of course after freshning up. 5 rounds of sundal and 2 rounds of ice cream later, we headed back to our rooms. If you think that the exhaustion would us hold us as prisoners of sleep, then you are mistaken again! 😀 Humidity in the place was high and to come over it, we’d to resort to a midnight walk again, this time on the urban deserted roads of Trivandrum! Sleeping at 1am was not new to us now, and so the custom was followed again 😛 .

Darshan at the temple the previous day was not very satisfactory for a bunch of guys, headed by me. So, waking up at 430 am, we set off to the temple again. Keeping in mind, the 945 am train by which we’re supposed to leave to Kanyakumari, we were back to the rooms as fast as we could, finishing off the breakfast ritual. By 945am, it was time we said Bye Bye Trivandrum! 🙂

Next stop : Kanyakumari! 😀