Some of Kerala's Beauty

These are statues that were scattered around the grounds of a beach resort.  It was like a tropical garden.  There were pathways through the grounds and some of these statues were tucked away among the flora and fauna.  My host told me the going price for a cabin here at this resort and frankly I thought it was a little expensive.  The beach front was rustic.  To me it projected solitude.  If I was looking for a place to get away and contemplate or write this might make the price a little more attractive.  I was truely a beautiful location.  Beautiful in a way that I did not expect.

The beach here along the Arabian sea was rustic in most places we looked.  The surf was heavy and color of the sea reminded me a lot of the atlantic along the Jersy shore.  There was a lot of volcanic rock in places and the surf provided a lot of excitement pounding away at the remnants of ancient eruptions.

In the location shown below, a river flowed into the Arabian sea.  We spent some time on this point.  The picutres above were taken in this location.  There was a bridge crossing the river at this point.  From the bridge I photgraphed the train shown in the composite photo.

I generated the composite photo below to show two different views. In the top photo of the train, a hilltop can be seen in the upper right of the photo.  That hilltop was the location of a Hindu temple, Niram Katha Katta.  We spent time there at sunrise and sunset.  It turned to be one of my favorite locations.  You could look back and see the point where we spent time and the bridge I stood on to photograph the train.  That view is shown in the lower half of the composite.

This photo was taken from Mr. Shanmogan's yard. The house was in  a beautiful setting filled with interesting and picturesque flora and fauna.

This final photo was taken from the temple hilltop at sunrise.  It is a humid area as witnessed by the heavy mist at sunrise.  It made for an intersesting and misterious view.

Kerala, God's State

When I was preparing to come to India, I vowed to myself that I would do some traveling.  I have had my first trip.  I went to Karala on the weekend of 21 May.  Karala is the home state of one of our flutter engineers, Santhosh Nedukanjarathingal.  Before I left I asked Santhosh if I could visit his parents.  He liked the idea and he encouraged me.  When I got here Santhosh put me in touch with his father, Shanmogan.  We cooresponded by email and got a trip set up.  Originally I wanted to come by train.  There were no good train connections to Calicut (aka Kozikote), the city in Karala closest to their home.  I took a flight on Kingfisher airlines.  Beer and airplanes; not normally a good combination but then this is India.  The airplane was an ATR 72 with one of those fancy six-bladded semitar props.  It was very quiet for a prop driven airplane.  It was a short hop over to Calicut.  It only took about an hour.

Mr. Shanmogan met me at the airport.  I picked him out right away because he looked so much like his son, Santhosh.  It was a small rural airport, not as crowded as Bangalore.  The weather was warm and quite humid.  How humid?  So humid that when you got out of an air conditioned car, your glasses fogged over.

Very near this little airport is the spot where the Portuguese explorer, Vasco de Gama, landed in 1498.  He got off the boat, looked around and said, "Hey, my glasses are fogged over!"  This was a small price to pay for what turned out to be a charming weekend in a beautiful part of India.  The Germans have a saying about France; "as happy as God in France." In India Karala is described as "God's State."

Santhosh's parents were wonderful hosts.  They had built a beautiful retirement home near Calicut.  Mr. Shanmogan had designed it complete with book-matched marble floors, a beautiful marble staircase and golden teak woodwork throughout.  The house was in a rural setting surrounded by tropical foliage.  One of the traditions here in India is to take "tender coconut."  It is a young coconut with the top sliced off with a straw so you can sip the juice.  When the juice is gone, the coconut is split open and the meat is scooped out and eaten.  They are sold on the street here in Bangalore.  They are very high in potassium.  The tender coconuts at Mr. Shanmogan's house came off trees in his backyard.  As a result they were very sweet.  Sweeter than the ones on the street here.

Santhosh's mother refused to let us eat out.  She cooked marvelous meals.  I had a half a dozen or more delicous curries.  None of them tasted like anything I had ever had.  There was a shrimp curry, several vegetable curries, rice, fruit, cashews and fried fish from the local rivers.  The fish was delicous.  It was a small fish that had been marinated in what we would consider a spice rub.  No fishy flavor evident and the flesh was firm and sweet.  Below Mr. Shanmogan is shopping for fish for our supper.

I arrived on Friday evening and camed back on Sunday afternoon.  Mr. Shanmogan was a perfect tour guide.  We visited some of his favorite spots, saw a lot of the area around his neighborhood, made a trip into Calicut and visited some of Mr. Shanmogan's closest friends.  He was very patient with my obsession for taking pictures.  I took a lot and  I am going to share this trip with you in several posts.