Recently I got chance to visit Kerala. What a trip it was...! A break much needed for all of us. I have so many things to share from my Kerala trip. I will narrate in parts this time and try to bring some unique flavours of Kerala god’s own country!
Glimpse of beautiful Kerala started as soon as we arrived at Cochin Airport. Airport is having traditional Kerala architecture outlook. Most prominent feature in Kerala’s architecture is its gabled roofs. The moment I arrived in parking area south Indian scene was totally set. Men wearing Mundus [White dhoti...Traditional Kerala attire for men]..... Ladies with lots of flowers in their hair.....ahhhh south Indian flavour everywhere setting mood of the trip!
I had hired cab from http://www.savaari.com/ which was going to be with us for our entire Kerala trip. One of the biggest worry which was occupying my mind while I was planning for the trip was concern to have cab driver who can speak either Hindi or English to avoid any communication hassles. Still my Chile trip and my adventure with Spanish language during those trips were totally fresh in my mind! I never wanted to go through same situation again. I had given call and reminded the tour operator minimum 10 times for arranging a Hindi / English speaking driver for our trip; still I was not confident that I would get the driver perfect!
As they say what we think same we get! Same thing happened to me also. My doubt came into reality and our cab driver named Saiju hardly knew any English words :). Hindi language was totally out of scope for him!!That was the First puncture in my so called over excited wagon wheel of the Kerala trip. In my own country also I was in same situation which I faced in Chile! Why Why Why me always! :(. Again I would have to depend on sign language more rather than spoken language in order to communicate with this fellow. I never wanted to experiment on sign language again due to backlog of my horrifying experiences in Chile for the same.
Here comes my mother’s first instruction for me before entering the car: “Hetal order driver, not to play any south Indian songs!” I couldn’t stop laughing as our Madurai trip resurfaced in my memory lane! Hmmm...Mothers can never forget you know! Somehow I managed driver to agree my mother’s terms and condition. Finally our journey started from Cochin to Munnar.
Munnar is a hill station located around 135 kms from Cochin. It takes 4-5 hours drive by road to reach Munnar from Cochin. After almost 2 hours drive my mother triggered a funny conversation.
My Mother:”How big this Cochin City is Hetal? See we have started from airport for last 2 hours and still continuously on both sides of road we are seeing residential buildings. Ask driver when we will reach highway and when this city will end? “
I tried my level best to make Saiju the driver understand query of my mother! And you know this time I succeeded in that. Yuppie....I also do learn and improve upon my weakness!
Here is Saiju’s answer: “Madam, this no Cochin, 4 cities over. This national highway. Kerala chota road, chota city, near city!
In short he wanted to tell that Cochin city got over long back. After Cochin City we had crossed another 3 cities and now we are going through 4th city! We never realised it! In Kerala all cities or towns are very much connected to each other, hardly we could find out that now one city is over and another city/town has started. We are used to seeing a huge empty plain land and farms between two cities which clearly demarks the boundaries. But here we found almost all towns or villages in Kerala are totally inter connected with hardly any demarcation between them! Wish our international borders also become like this one day!
The road which my mother was naming as city’s internal small road actually turned out to be a National Highway! We couldn’t believe that for a while and thought that this driver is joking! But after some time I saw a sign board of national highway which proved that Saiju was correct. We were indeed on National Highway which was hardly 8-9 feet wide! In spite of such narrow highways or roads, we never observed any traffic chaos or accidents anywhere in our 9 days road trip. Simply Smooth and silky journey! One of the reasons to make me fall in eternal love with this god’s own country!
