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.