Joe and I were both excited to get to Kerala. I had heard almost universally good things about the state from people before the trip and during the trip. When we told folks along the way we were going there, they nodded their heads in agreement that it was a good idea. The south of India is also quite different than the north, and we were excited for the change of pace, hoping it would be a little slower and less chaotic.
We arrived in Kochi, the capital of Kerala, in pouring rain and took a taxi the hour-long drive to our hotel. We decided to splurge on a nice hotel in Kochi to take some time to get settled into a new part of the country.
It continued to rain on our first full day in Kochi. We took a taxi from the hotel to the downtown city area and the rain letup for a bit before coming back in full force. We walked around the Chinese fishing nets and then looked for a place for lunch. It was offseason, though, and it was becoming apparent that the combination of it being a Sunday, along with the offseason time, meant almost everything was going to be closed. Also by this point my stomach started to turn south, probably something I’d eaten at dinner the night before, so we walked around for another hour before we took a taxi back to our hotel. Joe had spent the first few days in Delhi in bed with a stomach bug, but this was my first real bout of illness on the trip.
We took it easy that evening and into the afternoon of the next day. By this point I’d stopped eating food and my stomach was starting to settle. The largest mall in southern India was a half hour away, and we were interested to see what it was all about.
Lulu mall was extravagant. We roamed aimlessly through for a while before Joe shopped around at the food court for dinner and I looked on enviously, knowing my stomach wasn’t yet ready. Afterwards we saw a local film at a movie theater called Role Models. The plot was a little hard to follow considering we didn’t speak the language, but the general plot details made sense just from context.
From Kochi we headed south to Alleppey, a 1.5 hour bus ride south. Alleppey is famous for its houseboats, but these ones actually move, unlike the barge-types in Srinagar. The heat was brutal as we walked the mile from the bus station to our houseboat. Unfortunately, the houseboat was pretty dingy compared to the one we’d stayed on in Kashmir, but it would do for a night. It had a beautiful upper deck, and we’d spend most of the time cruising around anyways.
On board there was an Indian couple who were visiting from Pune. The girl in the couple was actually studying at the University of Nebraska so we talked for a while about the differences between the US and Indian educational systems. It sounds like the school system in India is really tough in terms of the level of competition, but that the working world isn’t as cutthroat. This was something I’d heard from my Indian friends in the states–that doing well in school was seen as essential for success in life, and that education was valued above wealth for social status.
The cruise around the Alleppey backwaters was beautiful. A series of rivers and channels form this network of waterways that make it one of the top attractions in the area. We braved a vicious barrage of mosquitos during dinner before settling in for the night.
The next morning we set off for the bus station once again, this time heading to Munnar, a town famous for its tea in the highlands further inland. The bus ride was beautiful. We were both relieved to have the cooler mountain air after the heat of Allepey. It was raining when we arrived in the evening, and we checked into our hotel and set off on a thirty minute walk in the pouring rain into town.
We ate a delicious curry dinner off banana leaves, with our hands in the local style.
The next day we set off for the tea museum in Munnar. I was expecting something pretty boring, but the museum was actually fascinating. There were some historical elements about the story of tea in Munnar and the region, but also demonstrations of how the tea-making process actually works. I picked up a fondness for tea a few years ago, but couldn’t have told you the first thing about how it’s made before I went to the museum. We left experts on the difference between green, black, oolong, and white tea.
After the tea museum we took a rickshaw tour of the surrounding area. The tea bushes covering the surrounding hills made for some lovely sights as we drove around in the misty afternoon.
In the afternoon we checked into the Kaivalyam retreat, only a few kilometers away from the hotel where we’d spent the evening the night before.
We didn’t really know what to expect at the retreat, but it was so highly reviewed on various travel websites that we jumped at the two nights it had availability during our time in Munnar.
It didn’t disappoint. The retreat had a whole host of activities right up our alley: tea tasting, meditation, yoga, a spice plantation walk, bird watching, and a cooking class. It was also the perfect place to stay for Joe’s birthday, and his last few days in India before he headed off to Southeast Asia.
The guided meditation, led by the owner of Kaivalyam, was the perfect way to wind down before dinner. Joe and I had both been trying to meditate every day on the trip, usually carving out a half hour as part of the morning routine, but it was nice to try out a different style of meditation from someone who had been doing this most of their life.
The next day was Joe’s birthday, and we started off with yoga in the morning. I’d never actually done yoga before, and I don’t think Joe had either. Some of the positions tested our flexibility and core strength, but it was a perfect foray into something I’ve wanted to try for a while. In the afternoon we went on a hike to a nearby waterfall where we ran into the same couple from the houseboat in Alleppey! We chatted for a while over some Marsala tea before heading back for a cooking class in the evening.
That evening Joe and I celebrated his birthday over the food we’d cooked during the cooking class. It was our last dinner together for potentially a couple weeks, or possibly the whole trip depending on how our itineraries overlapped in Thailand.
In the morning, we went on a spice plantation walk with a group of Americans who were working out of their company’s office in Bangalore.
When the plantation walk was over we hustled into town to catch buses to our respective locations. Joe had to be back in the states earlier than I did, so he was heading off to Thailand to make sure he would have enough time exploring Southeast Asia. I continued on to Kumily, another highlands town in Kerala.
We said our goodbyes at the bus station and continued on our separate ways.