During my month long vacations,we (mum, dad and I) traveled to Kerela, a lovely state in the southernmost part of the Indian subcontinent.
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| Bbay---> Kerela |
My mum thought that it would be great to travel by train. She was thinking of lazy mornings and seeing the countryside through the large tinted windows while enjoying delicious food all day long. The train we had booked in was Duronto, an express that goes from one city to another without stopping anywhere in between.
That part of the trip wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Duronto is a terrible train. We were supposed to reach by 5.30. Instead we got there three hours later. The train also had a nasty habit of stopping every hour in the middle of nowhere.
When we finally reached Ernakulum city, it was almost nine. My mum was unwell and we all were tired. But our journey had just begun. We were supposed to take a car to the town of Munnar, a lovely little place in the hills that was three hours away.
Except that it wasn’t three hours away.
We thought that we would reach our hotel by midnight. We reached by two (That too because the driver was a maniac).
The roads were slippery and serpentine. They took us away from the sea-level with potholes and dangerous turns. They weren’t even wide enough to let two cars pass! It was pitch black and there was no soul in sight. The Eucalyptus trees that were growing on the slopes looked eerily sinister as the light from our car bounced off their slender bodies.
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| Our expectations were rather high |
And if all this wasn’t enough, the driver was speeding! The car kept bouncing off the frequent potholes and the guy kept going faster and faster...that was the first time I got carsick in India. Somehow we managed to reach Munnar before two a.m. We checked in tired and terrified, made our way to our cottage and got ready to hit the sack.
The first impression of Kerela wasn't exactly good. Would things get better or was it all downhill from here? Thinking along these lines I drifted off to sleep.
