In the land of Idlis and Spices.

We, along with Anup, Yogini and their daughter Vyoma, reached Chennai after a comfortable but lenghty 24hr. train journey. This was our first visit to Kannan's place in Chennai, where we spent a few days looking around Chennai, shopping and eating the south Indian way.

During our stay in Chennai we drove down to Pondicherry, a superb colonial coastal town which has still retained the flavour of it's French rulers. It's a great place to laze around with lots of good places to visit. The marine drive is lined with great white colonial structures and stuccos from the French era. Then there is the Aurobindo ashram and the Auroville ashram with it's dome shaped medition centre right out of a spielberg movie...the thing we didnt like about Pondi was the food..maybe Kanna didnt take us to the right place..;) but the journey was great, thanks to the air-conditioned Toyota-Qualis arranged by Kannan.

On our way back to Chennai we visited Mahabalipuram, the city of the stone carvings and temples which are now treasured and protected by the Archeological department of India. Mahabalipuram incidentally has a great beach. We were late by the time we reached the famous artist village of 'Dakshin Chitra' and we could not see the artists performing, but we did pick up some handicrafts.

An overnite train journey brought us to kottayam from Chennai. Kannan, Chitra and Vaibhav could not join us on our trip to Kerala so now it was just us and Anup, yogini and Vyoma. The best thing about Kottayam was our hotel, The Lakeview Retreat. It's a modern resort built on the lines of traditional Keralite architechture right amongst the backwaters. We spent almost the whole day puttering in a motorboat through the backwater lagoons right upto Kumarkoum. By evening we had seen Cormorants and Kingfishers like we see Crows and Sparrows in Bombay.

We left for Thekkady the next morning, where we stayed for 3 days in Aranya Niwas, situated in the middle of the Periyar Tiger Reserve. It was a great experience although we were not lucky enough to see the elephants and had to be satisfied with the sight of Deer, Sambar, wild boars and buffaloes and lots and lots of birds. We also visited the spice plantations and for the first time saw the cardamom, cocoa and pepper plants along with all other spices.

A five hour drive took us to Munnar, which is a very pleasent hill station full of Tea plantations. We also visited a Tea factory and went speed boating. At the local national park we had the opportunity to see the 'Nilgiri Tahr' a protected species of deer found only in the south of India. We celebrated the New year in Munnar and left for cochin on the 2nd January, from where we took the Netravati express to Bombay, during which we enjoyed the Kokan railway journey.
In 36 hours we were back at Kurla, enjoying the rush, stink and humid climate of good old Bombay we love so much!

~Swapnil.