I had a 1 week shutdown at office last
week. A few weeks prior, my mom called me and asked why don’t we do a week long
drive through Kerala during this time? And even my dad was ready and started
planning for it! I felt like the school kid who goes to collect his participation
certificate after a competition. Hence, I decided to buckle up and really play
an “active” part by reading Srinath’s Truewanderer blog
(which was inaccessible on that day but had been cached in Google repository by
good fortune) and I called him afterwards to check out some good places in Kerala.
My folks had a long list of temples to visit in Kerala. In any case I was looking forward to the drive
more than anything else.
Since this was a very casual
trip, we didn’t plan hotels or route too specifically but knew the overall set
of places to cover. With the entire luggage packed and a car charger added as
the “innovative” add-on for the trip, we started off on our i20 from
Puliampatti after finishing the Saraswati Puja ceremonies at home.
DAYS 1 - 3 ROUTE MAP
Day 1
Reached Thrissur by 3pm and
visited Vadakkunathan
temple, one of the oldest and grandest temples in Kerala. Afterward reached
Guruvayoor by 8pm and stayed at the devasthanam resthouse.
Day 2
Woke up early in the morning for
a 3am darshan at the Guruvayoor
temple. Though this temple is really famous drawing large amounts of crowd,
I was really happy to be in a very organized and non-chaotic environment for a
simple darshan after a 2 hour wait in the queue. Went back to the lodge for a short nap and woke
up by 8am. We then drove to Kodungallur Bhagavathy temple and I
really got the feel of driving in interior Kerala roads and it was really laid
back and smooth. By this time, I had come to understand the standard template of
Kerala temple architecture and layout and I was kinda super-full of holy
spirits within J.
Went to Athirapilly falls, which
was again a fabulous drive from Chalakkudy. Being a Vijayadasami holiday, it
felt like the entire kerala was at the falls. However crowded, it was not a
bother at all.
Spent some time there and
proceeded to Kalady for the night stay.
Day 3
Kalady being the birthplace of
Adishankaracharya, has a small ashram and a sthampa mandapam. We visited these
places and drove to Chottanikkara
temple and Aluva before halting at Tripunithura for finishing lunch and
visiting the Hill
Palace. I was really saturated with temples by this time even though I didn’t
mind going to so many of them in a day. In a way, it was a nice break between
driving sessions.
From here, I went online to book a
homestay near Fort Kochi and proceeded to drive to Fort Kochi and halt for the
day.
Day 4
Fort Kochi was the welcome
break from the temple over-dose I was looking for. As Srinath rightly put it, it
did remind me of Gokarna in the same manner that town has the residential part
and tourist spots with cafés along the beach. Really beautiful! It was good to
visit the Jewish town, see the Chinese fishing nets in action and walk to St.
Francis church.
I also witnessed Kerala filmstar
Dileep in a movie shooting. In the scene, he just has to get out of a car and
smile at the camera… that’s all! And there were so many takes for this simple
scene, with the director telling the actor on loudspeaker to show his
expressions and timing, or so I understood. Hard work indeed.
After spending some time at Fort
Kochi, we drove to Vaikom. We went for a water ride across the backwaters in
the ferry (which felt just like going in MTC bus) and visited the Shiva temple. This temple
is really an old and grand temple with perfectly well preserved murals. And being
a nearly desolated one (compared to all the crowds that I witnessed till now),
I found this the most special amongst all Kerala temples. This reminded me of Thiruvalanjuli
temple in Kumbakonam, one of grandest yet completely desolated temples, a
very peculiar and rare combination.
We then drove to Kollam to halt
for the night. Unfortunately, all the hotels and homestays were booked and we
had to do a drive-n-search to check out any hotels. Fortunately we came across
a huge hotel which was not listed anywhere online, which saved our day.
DAYS 5 - 7 ROUTE MAP
Day 5
We went to Munroe island, located
an hour from Kollam town to experience the backwaters. Ideally, Allepey is a
very good location to do the same, but this proved to be a nice non-crowded
location for canoeing.
After coming back from Munroe
island, we drove to Trivandrum to visit the Ananthapadmanabha
temple. This temple is really grand and has a tamilnadu style architecture.
Because this temple became famous after a gold mine of treasures was discovered
underneath, it started attracting huge amount of random crowd from across the
country like Thirupathi. We halted at a nearby hotel for the night.
Day 6
We planned on reaching Peraiyur
by evening. This was the longest drive during all the seven days, covering 320km
in a single stretch. My cousin has a small farm there and it was finally
possible to visit it after many years. As compared to Kerala, today's drive was completely dry from Thriunelveli - Peraiyur route. But the monsoon finally started around this
part making it green and cool. And continuing the streak of temple
visits, we visited a small temple and ashram nearby on the auspicious day of a Full
moon.
Day 7
We finally left for home which
was a long 2900km drive. Since swami Chidbhavananda ashram in Theni was nearby,
we combined this along the way...that was the temple of the day! This was located on the bank of Mullai river (of Mullai-periyar) and it had a super strong current owing to rains.
Finally reached home around 4pm
and watched a few episodes of Breaking Bad and a few
chapters of A Dances with Dragons to
get out from my super dazed holy-spirited state. This trip was a much needed
mind refresh to get out from the frame of the set of impassive months that went
by. Back to the grind now!
