Growing a Beard

Arriving in Kerala, it was very easy to see the differences between the other places I’ve been to in India. From the plane window we could see all the green everywhere and lots of water. The weather was much hotter than Hyderabad and much more humid. Another nice surprise was all the palm trees everywhere which made us feel like we had landed in a tropical place.

I flew in to Cochin with Air Sahara and paid 4300 (80€) rupees for a round trip. Our flight was a couple of hours late so we missed the whole day in Cochin. The taxi trip from the airport to Fort Cochin, where we were staying, around 600 rupees and it took us around 2 hrs to get to our hotel.

It took us two hours to arrive to our hotel, Ann’s Residency, in Fort Cochin and we were very happy to see how cool and laid back the town was. There were far less people than any other place we had visited in India and the mix of palm trees, sound of the sea and the hot tropical air made me feel like I was finally on vacation. After a short walk in town, we had dinner at the Old Courtyard where there was live music for the evening. The place is very cosy with a great atmosphere and service and of course tasty, but not very remarkable food. The power went out during the dinner and the place went pitch black. It took a couple of minutes before the garden was lit up with candles and the place looked even nicer than it did with the power on. Our hotel was a homestay and good value for the price (1500 rupees for non air conditioned room). The owner however was very keen to send us to another hotel in Munnar than the one we had already booked, when he heard we were heading that way and wouldn’t stop propagating for it even though we said we weren’t interested; he kept saying “Ok, it’s your choice, BUT…” over and over again and got very annoying after a short while.

Chinese fishing nets and fishing boats in Fort Cochin

We started the next day with breakfast in the highly recommended Kashi Art Café and spent the rest of the day walking around town and stopping to cool down from the extreme heat. We stopped by the Solar Café which is in the same building as the Draavidia Art Gallery. We had some fresh lime soda with ginger, one of my favourite drinks in India beside sweet lime juice, and fresh fruit before we went to the Chinese fishing nets for seafood lunch. There are a couple of fishmongers just behind the nets where we could buy fresh fish and have it cooked for 60 rupees at one of the many shacks along the seafront. The shacks don’t have a license to serve alcohol so they’ll bring your beer in a teapot and we had to drink it out of tea cups, which actually adds to the experience. We had dinner at the History Restaurant inside the Brunton Boatyard. The place is very fancy and hence pricy and we didn’t see any Indian people eating there. There was however live music and the food and the service was fine, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. But if you want to meet loads of rich foreigners and pay too much for food and drink, this is the place for it in Fort Cochin.

Fishmongers in Fort Cochin

I’m writing this on the plane to Dublin from Frankfurt, there was just an announcement about the weather at my final destination, heavy rain and thunder storms…I think I’m gonna jump off the plane before it’s too late. Haven’t been able to post anything for a couple of weeks, been very busy at work with finishing everything off but also spent a lot of time with my friends. Went on vacation all last week and got myself a well deserved tan

I finally got my visa sorted out and could leave the country without any problems. Yesterday I landed back in Hyderabad after one week of vacation in the magical state of Kerala in south west of India. After landing in Hyderabad I was driven in full speed to the Commissioners office in order to collect my “Exit Permit” which was another session of smiling and nodding followed by a stamp and signature in green (a special green ink is used for all official signatures). This was followed by four trips in the car á la 40 minutes all over the city: the hotel for shower and changing, Peshwari in Sheraton for last supper and my final portion of Paneer Tikka, back to the hotel for final packing and finally to the airport just before midnight, and all this in the period of six hours. Paula and I dozed off as soon as we got to our seat in the plane and didn’t even wake up for the take off.

We landed in Frankfurt 9 hrs later at 8:30 in the morning. The best part of the flight was the Bollywood sci-fi movie which, in true Bolly style didn’t make any sense but was very entertaining at 7 in the morning. Landing in Frankfurt was like stepping into another world and all the Christmas decoration made me feel like I was one step closer to home. After two months in India with sun and heat I had completely forgotten about the season and that it’s as the matter of fact December with Christmas Eve three weeks away.

Sunset over the backwaters in Kerala

My stories from Kerala are too many and too long to tell in this post so I will post more asap. Also look out for new pictures on Flickr and my Picasa photo album.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have now started descending towards Dublin airport and we’ll be landing shortly. Please fasten your seatbelts and make sure…”

My trip to India is now sadly officially over and I got to go.

See you guys very soon!