India Day 11: Farewell...see you soon

 Up early...again to check out and the hotel staff helped us get a taxi to the airport. They set the price with the driver (1000 rupees) and we managed to get our luggage in his very small car (no tuktuks in Mumbai, only small tuktuk coloured taxis) and off we went.

We were a little worried as we had boiler an extra suitcase to get all the gifts home but if wouldn't fit inside the car...so they tied it to the roof with what looked like a scarf.

Now, you remember that we love India. Well this is one of the reasons why. In the UK you wouldn't tie a suitcase onto a roof rack with a scarf. Bit in India you would and it was fine. When we got to the airport it was still there. Ha!

We were lucky with the drive as the sun was not long up and shining over the Mumbai city scape.


Overall an amazing trip. It didn't have the massive touristy sites of the North, like the Golden Temple and the Taj Mahal, or the complete bonkers of the Jaipur market or Varanasi...but instead Kerala had a more relaxed feel, a kind of hippy trail where we met a different kind of traveller and experienced India at a slower pace.

We both loved it and it won't be long before we are boarding the plane again to bring us back.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

India Day 10: Mumbai

Image
The same taxi driver that drive us up was there at 5:30am to drive us back down to the airport at Kochi. It had taken 3.5 hours to get up there (at speed) but the taxi company thought it would only take 3 hours to get back down. We had a flight to catch a were a little dubious but we trusted there judgement. Well, they were wrong...it took just over 2.5 hours to get down.. And we were overtaken on the way so weren't even the fastest thing on the road! Got to the airport in plenty od time and boarded our flight o Mumbai. We had opted for a bit of luxury in Mumbai and booked the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel near the Gateway to India, and even treated ourselves to booking a taxi with the hotel to transfer us from the aiport. Little did we know that this was a chauffer driven SUV. We were a bit taken aback by this. It was more expensive than we thought but worth it as a one off. The journey was 5000 rupees and when we got to the hotel it was very plush.  Our room for £270 didn't have a w...
Read more

India Day 5: Exploring Munroe Island and the Festival

Image
Woke up early (again) for a dawn cruise on the canoe punted by Vijeesh himself this time. Was well worth the early alarm as we took a different route and saw the party lights of the temple for this evenings' festival as well as a truly amazing sunrise. Otters too! Afterwards we arrived back for a lovely traditional breakfast of pancakes, banana and melon...smashing. But with nothing planned we took the opportunity to spend the rest of the mornjng relaxing a doing a fee chores like washing clothes and having a snooze. The room was lovely and cool with the aircon and fan and we could have slept.longer but woke ourselves up for lunch, more home cooked curry which was very tasty and mostly veggie but with a few small fried fish too if you fancied them. After lunch we asked Vijeesh about yoga and he gave us the number of a local shala whom we whatsapped and set up a session for the following day. He also put a couple of pins in my Google maps app for a nearby cotton weaving factory an...
Read more

India Day 6: Yoga, bikes and kayaks

Image
Woke up and made the short 15 minute walk to a local yoga shala for our first practice since Kochi. It was easy to find and the teacher was waiting for us outside the shala which was up a metal staircase with views of the surrounding mangrove forest. 90 sweaty minutes later we felt stretched out and at peace with the world. It was Hatha yoga for those who know about these things and cost 1000 rupees each. Glowing, we headed back to the homestay for breakfast and chatted to the group about the start of the day. Vijeesh has bikes for hire, no idea how much they are but we took a couple for a spin around the island, calling in at a repair shop on the way to tighten the chain (50 rupees) and the juice shop from yesterday. This time he even turned the fan on for us. We had no route planned so just pootled about, went over our bike treads a few times and even found the local Munroturuttu train station before calling it a day due to a bit of saddle sore. Bikes were fine though and the roads p...
Read more