Kerala – A Trip to the God’s Own Country

This was my first trip after marriage. I took a package of 6 nights and 7 days from Spiceland Holidays. We board our flight on 27th November 2011 at 6 am from Delhi to Kochi. We reached Kochi at 9am and there was a driver waiting for us. He took us directly to Munnar, which is 130 kms away from Kochi. Driving thought the green hills covered with tea plants we reached our Hotel Fort Munnar at 2pm. Hotel was amazing as it was surrounded by hills with lake in between. The Hotel staff is very co-operative.

Munnar: NATURE AT ITS BEST.
The best part of this hill station is that it’s not at all commercialised like Simla. We saw various crops like coffee plantation, tea plantation and cardamom plantation. We went for a traditional Kerala massage which was for like 2 hrs as was too relaxing (A must on Kerala trip).Due to the ongoing issue for the dam between Tamil Nadu and Kerala the political parties called out for strike so we were not able to visit many places. We stayed there for two days and then left for Thekkady.

Note : If there is strike in Kerala then your mobility is totally restricted between 6am to 6pm. So we left Munnar at 3 in the morning so that we reach Thekkady before 6 am.

Thekkady:
We stayed here for a day at Club Mahindra Tusker Trails Resort. I suggest you to spent 1 day in Munnar and 2 days in Thekkady, so that you can go for Jungle safari (which is for a day). We enjoyed Elephant ride in afternoon and then saw Kathakali dance and Kalaripayattu in evening. We left for Alleppey next day in the morning at 7.

Alleppey:
We reached here at 10:30 am and boarded our houseboat at 11am. This was the best experience of all as we were on the houseboat for the first time. The person driving the boat was amazing. Thought of being on water for 22 hrs was amazing. The boat went through several lakes and canals. We saw several villages where the only means of transportation was boat.

There were boat stands where the motorboats operated by govt carry ppl from one place to another. imagine salesman coming to your house on boat for selling various household items like fish, vegetables, spices or a gas cylinder. The food that they provided was totally home cooked. We saw sunset and sunrise it was too romantic. We left the Boat at 9 am in the morning and left for our final destination Trivandrum.

Trivandrum:
Here our stay was at Uday Samudra Beach Hotel. Amazing hotel with all facilities and Kovallam beach at the backyard. We saw Padmanabhaswamy temple, Padmanabhaswamy Palace. There are 3 museums that tells us the history of the city and the culture (photography not allowed) and a Zoo nearby which takes more than an hour to see. We had lots of fun at kovallam beach as the environment was very vibrant. The beach extended up to resort backyard.

Overall it was a the trip was amazing and we enjoyed it to the fullest.