Gods Own Country, Kerala.

[vijay]

Step down to the world of peace, calmness with a noise, grassland with trees, joyous faces, narrow streets with neatness and cleaniness, the world also known as Gods own land KERELA.
Sharing with you all our trip to this gods land we did this april end to may first week with the sets of pictures, information and experience we all had.
Travellers: 3 couples and 4 kids
Camera: 1 dslr,
1 P&S
1 what you call cam between these two high range lens and zoom but
fixed lens.

So with total of 3 camera's and over 2.5k pictures we have from all the camera to share, will keep updating as and how i gather all the pictures from other friends.

What we take along: Eye mind hearth soothing land of god and its people
Beautifully maintained houses, neatness and cleaniness
where ever we went, small villages to city, this impresed
us the most with almost no hawkers on roads, if were not
disracting the traffic and human walkings,
Cusuins of kerela, authentic preparations,
Coconut trees, back waters,oceans, greenary, people
with smile and welcome heart.

What we wished for: Better communications with locals with language, and so
was with shopping at local markets, though not much of
an issue that was still found at some places the lack of
this as compared to people who know their language.
For pure veg peoples the choices gets to limited for meal
More time we all wanted to spend so next trip is surely
coming ahead.

 

[manojodungat]

Re: Gods Own Country, kerela.

Nice start
Subscribed to this thread already.
Hope you had a great time in Kerala.
If you are a non-veg, you couldn't have missed the famous Kerala "porotta" and fish curry.
Please upload larger pictures with better resolution to do justice to the DSLR and other Cams you carried.

 

[AR Ram]

Re: Gods Own Country, kerela.

@vijay
Waiting for your TL and photographs

 

[gns_blr]

Re: Gods Own Country, kerela.

Nice start
Waiting for more pics.

 

[Rajvel]

Good start
Waiting for the photos.
Pls post ASAP.

 

[vijay]

Started off the journey on 24th April from Ahmedabad to Trivendram via Chennai as our direct train reservation tickets did not got confirmed,so the deroute through chennai.
A long journey of almost 2 days in Indian Rail, i have been on such travelling routes many a times through out my life specially Kolkatta from ahmedabad which used to be a 42 hours journey so this was no special ,nor tiring but for kids and my other friends it was a bit though.
The ongoing peoples boarding on and off the stations, stalls shouting out the chai chai chai, samosa samosa and many more things brings back some old memmories.
We arrived at chennai next day by 4pm, for us to wait for another 2 + hours to catch another train for trivendram our starting destination.
Opposite to chennai station we saw our cricket stadium and some people confirmed its the very same chennasawmi stadium.
There was a very different smell in the land of chennai, thats something i always relatively feel in all cities i travel.It was very hot and very humid out there waiting but we all were exited about the onwards journey to reach our destination.Kids had some time playing on the newly made platform no5 with pebbles while ladies enjoyed their gossips and phonecalls back home.
Chennai station has some very good stalls for juices and snacks as well as proper meals which we all relished later on.

 

[AR Ram]

Started off the journey on 24th April from Ahmedabad to Trivendram via Chennai as our direct train reservation tickets did not got confirmed,so the deroute through chennai.
A long journey of almost 2 days in Indian Rail, i have been on such travelling routes many a times through out my life specially Kolkatta from ahmedabad which used to be a 42 hours journey so this was no special ,nor tiring but for kids and my other friends it was a bit though.
The ongoing peoples boarding on and off the stations, stalls shouting out the chai chai chai, samosa samosa and many more things brings back some old memmories.
We arrived at chennai next day by 4pm, for us to wait for another 2 + hours to catch another train for trivendram our starting destination.
Opposite to chennai station we saw our cricket stadium and some people confirmed its the very same chennasawmi stadium.
There was a very different smell in the land of chennai, thats something i always relatively feel in all cities i travel.It was very hot and very humid out there waiting but we all were exited about the onwards journey to reach our destination.Kids had some time playing on the newly made platform no5 with pebbles while ladies enjoyed their gossips and phonecalls back home.
Chennai station has some very good stalls for juices and snacks as well as proper meals which we all relished later on.

Chinnaswamy stadium is in Bangalore

The stadium what you saw near the Chennai Central Station is Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium

And Chennai Cricket stadium is MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chepauk, a couple of kms from the central station

 

[Gurrala74]

Hmm, Nice travelogue buddy !! I am glued to the thread as I am yet to make a family trip to kerala the very famous "Gods own country" truly

 

[Tenida]

Very nice travel thread buddy. Waiting for more update :-)

 

[vijay]

sorry guys m out of town for family wedding and so is the delay in updates, would do it as i return back in town.
Thankyou for the appreciations.
A R Ram, thankyou sir for the information and sorry for wrong information about the stadium as that was what we thought is the stadium looking from our railway platform.

 

[vijay]

Some 40 minutes drive from trivendram rly station to kovalam, we checked in our UDS Resorts, Kovalam.(Uday Samudra Resorts and Spa,Kovalam).
Its a huge property with nicely inovated pickup and drop house shaped roof with a boat shapped open aquarium on the sides.
A large wiating lounge with its main cafe on the opposite, shopping spree on the backyard with three swimming pools to enjoy.A nice property tobe in and to start our tour in gods country.
We were alloted our rooms and as specified for the ground floors with kids along, were alloted opposite to the third pool and garden area with the backyard connected with the sea.Perfect to what we needed to relax and enjoy our trip.
Ladies wanted to relax and set down with the luggage and all, we guys took kids along in the pool for a while to calm selves and enjoy with them.This is the best time when no office, work anything else then being with your kids and pool, ah perfect.
Got selves ready and we departed off to kovalam beach by early evening, as being vacation time, there were quite lot of peoples and visitors but still not very crowded tobe in.Not soo much of clean the sea sides were, we got near by the sea, saw a cleaned area where all the stuffs and cameras and all were kept and got few meters inside the sea with kids, one of the couples would look out for the stuffs and kids who didnt wanted to come inside and others would take turn tobe in there.Water was nice, salty as it should be .
We enjoyed our 2 hours there with nice coconut waters being sold there along with some snacks and bites we had along with.A nice begining on our first day of journey so far.

 

[vijay]

another sets of the same places pictures

 

[vijay]

Next day out itenery had a visit to the famous vivekanand rock, kanyakumari so we all knew that the whole day would be covered for kanyakumari.
Morning breakfast at the UDS and we were all getting ready to start the journey towards kanyakumari.
While one of the family was yet to be ready, i thought to take a glimpse of the backyard which connects the sea and the fishermen who work their hard part catching fishes and also to let my kid see how they do.The upliftmens they shout their slogans is really insipring and thrilling and not just me but many people around there wanted to jump off to the shore with them and be a part of that group so active and loud.Amazing it feels.
Kanyakumari, this is where we actually felt hell lot of heat and summers thru out the trip,sun was scorching high with temperatures, was humid as well with sea aside.All we were worried was taking kids health in this temperature.With vacation time we knew there would be waitings and peoples flocking on the decks but man what much of the crowd like us minded on vacation, atleast above 300 were outside waiting to get tickets and almost same number of people inside the waiting area who already got tickets and waiting for their turn in ferry to take them fro.
No ways we were going to wait there for 3 to 4 hours to get our turn, side boards showed special entry fees without waitlist and went we there to get ours and few other people as well.
Routine entry tickets are 65/- per head where as special fare was 165/-.We went from the outside the wait area and were kept on hold for the ferry to arrive.With life jackets provided for each passengers we took our ferry towards the rock, dropped out and boy o boy the heat and sun was killing us all, specially when you are suppose to take your shoes socks off and floor was much much more hotter to even bear one second bare foot there.Took kids on our shoulders not to let them bear this pain of bare foot on sun, went upstairs towards the devotion room of Shri Vivekanand.What an picturesque place this has been.
Photography is not allowed inside the building and also were not allowed to sit there for a while, i remember when i came here some 13 years ago, it was and we friends who came meditated there for some half n hour peaceful silent place tobe in feels divine.But seems rules have changed and we should respecft that.
All over the place they have placed white paint with white cement combination stipe for visitors to walk in bare foot to get away from such scorching heat killing your feets.But even those few steps to get onto those strips would take you on a pretty hot ride...hahaha.

 

[vijay]

mods unable to upload pics together so making in small sets, please do merge with the post.

 

[vijay]

these ones too