Kerala: God’s Own Country: Day 1

Pausing the Russia travelogue to talk about an old trip

Having posted 25 stories over past 19 weeks talking exclusively about my trip to Russia, I thought of taking a healthy break and doing something else. Since I am terribly busy these days doing this and that, I have decided to take up a small project that was long overdue. In the next 5 posts (this one included), I will post about my 5-day trip to Kerala.

Kerala is a little communist state in South India that is well known for ayurvedic medicine, tourism and export of human capital. “God’s own country” is the slogan used by Kerala tourism board, and it sounded laughable. But when I went there, I thought that claim to be true…

The important thing to note here is that I am not going to write anything new. Instead, I’ll just copy paste the story as I wrote it back in 2006 – unedited, but in my current format of posting. It is very interesting to note how one’s writing styles, choice of words and even photographing habits change over time.

I hope you enjoy it.

Kerala travelogue: Day 1 of 5: From Mumbai to Kerala

The bomb and the flight
I reached Mumbai airport directly from office and was relaxing in the waiting area comforted by air conditioner while it rained outside. Suddenly a battery of police officers and airport authorities appeared and started evacuating passengers from inside the terminal. Apparently someone had placed a call warning about a bomb and one unidentified bag was spotted near the entrance gate. Bomb disposal squads were called to inspect the baggage while we waited outside the cordoned area. It turned out to be hoax, but during those ten minutes, the crowd was tense and I’m sure many were praying. There were some large cameras pointing at the glass windows trying to capture whatever they could. Media, sigh! I was imagining the news channels screaming ‘Breaking news‘ (they do this even if a cat is stuck on a tree).

Consequently our flight was delayed. Add to that the overcrowding at the security terminals. We managed to somehow scrape through and probably were the last ones to board the aircraft!

Welcome to Kerala
We landed at Trivandrum airport after a brief halt at Cochin (Kochi). The ground was damp, the sky was cloudy and the midnight air was fresh Welcome to Kerala!

Thiruvananthapuram central rail station

A friendly pre-paid taxi took us to the town center where the railway station and bus station are situated. He did not ask for any extra money (!). We made some general enquiries about buses and chatted with the locals trying find a place to stay. It was well past midnight and the city was sleeping peacefully. We got into a lodge on MG road, negotiated the rent and finally booked the room to stay.