One of my favourite photos of the trip we took through Kerala. We crashed at a great hotel on the banks of the lake for a few nights, and this dramatic electric night was as photogenic as they come.
Nevertheless, don’t be deceived. This was a rare summer storm, and the rest of the holiday was of flawless sunshine. Pre-monsoon though, it was a welcome relief!
Swine flu has gripped the Indian media and consequentially the nation. This picture was taken before Jex and Evie’s school was closed for a week.
This is a popular hangout for us next to the Godavari river and its impressive waterfall complete with the washing ghats and temple. Jex asked me to take a picture of them both standing next to the snake painting and the temple. So I did.
Its Ganesh time of year and the popular Hindu elephant God is everywhere. To celebrate, we went all arts-and-crafts and reused an old pile of the ‘The Times of India’ to papier mache a mask complete with trunck and obligatory glitter.
The kids have taken to a spot of stretching with our very own Yoga Teacher.
Little Italy has become our second home so we couldn’t let Hilary leave without trying the ‘Om’ pizza.
Remote, sluggish, Keralan backwater – check.
Cheerful villagers on the bank – check.
State-of-the-art mobile phones – er, check.
It seems to be a myth that rural Indians are anything other than first-class mobile citizens.
(Also I should add that we were in the middle of nowhere – but I still had a blazing data connection for navigating the channels on Google Maps.)
And the full set of our Keralan photos are here.
Yes, they are truly beautiful.
It’s one of those places in India that everyone is supposed to go – and the idea is that you hop in a houseboat or launch and cruise about in the quiet, lush canals, whilst the good people of Kerala make their livings on, by, and in the water.
So… we did just that.
Distributed across this huge area of lagoons and waterways are thousands of Chinese fishing nets. We spent the day drifting past these elaborate skeletal contraptions that are designed to lift the catch straight out of the water.
But most of the nets we saw seemed rather deserted – presumably the stocks are falling – and the only working nets we saw were those on show in the main, tourist-friendly port of Kochi.
(Of which more to come. As you can see I’m desperately trying to whittle down our Flickr holiday backlog before we dash off again.)
After leaving Trivandrum, we headed inland to get up (very) close with lions…
…across Neyyar Dam to find some reptiles…
…north a bit to hop on a ride with Duba the elephant..
…finally ending up at Quilon, a town at the southern end of the main section of the Keralan backwaters.
You might notice that our homestead for the night had a curious statue in the garden.
Sorry… this is a bit chronologically disjointed, but we were a bit lazy when we got back from travelling around India, so now I’m trying to catch up.
We started May by flying down to the very south-west of India, a state called Kerala, and hitting the beaches immediately.
Our first port of call was the very laid back ‘Coconut Bay’ hotel. Yes it was on a bay, and they had coconuts, but it more than lived up to all the Keralan beach resort clichés.
It’s only a few hours away from Nashik, but as you can imagine, we immediately got into the holiday state of mind – (sans jetlag!) – to the sounds of birds, palm trees, and crashing waves. Paradise!
