For our summer trip/Eid vacation, we headed to
India. Our friend, Deep, was getting married in
Pune and we decided to make a vacation out of it, as well as celebrate Chris's 30th birthday!
25 August 2011
Divine
Our first stop in India was
Cochin, Kerala. We flew
Gulf Air from
Bahrain to
Cochin. After landing
at 530am, we were picked up by our driver,
Vinot. We drove about 1.5 hours through New Cochin to Old Cochin to our
resort,
Malabar House. We had set up a package where we would spend a few days in each resort as part of the main boutique, each resort is situated in a different area of Cochin and had different things to offer. Honestly, it was one of the best ideas Chris ever had!
Once we got to
Divine, our first hotel stop, we were greeted immediately and shown to our super cute room. It was very
boutique like and had everything you needed.
 |
| Entrance to our hotel |
 |
| Boutique style, large bathroom, sitting area, mini-bar |
 |
| Courtyard of the hotel |
 |
| Courtyard of the hotel |
We freshened up and had a delicious breakfast of cheese
dosa and masala dosa. We decided we would take a nap until Vinot came
to pick us up for our sight seeing trip. We ended up over-sleeping and drowsily
drove around Cochin, where we saw men with fish nets, a church and browsed through village
shopping.
 |
| Near the fishing |
|
|
 |
| We were so delirious, like true tourists got talked into doing this and were charged about $1 for the picture to be taken... |
 |
| Shopping alley |
 |
| Church - there was actually a wedding going on when we tried to walk inside - oops! |
After we were taken back to the hotel, we fell asleep
for about 6 hours. We then managed to make it to dinner where we had some
delicious fish and risotto. Then we took advantage of our free wine
sampling and enjoyed some wine on the terrace.
 |
| Wine bar |
It was a perfect ending for an
exhausting day. We managed to sleep until morning where we would be
whisked away to our next resort called
Serenity.
26 August 2011
Serenity
We
woke up early to have breakfast and Vinot picked us up to take us
to
Serenity. It is about a 3 hour car ride - so we were able to see a lot of Kerala. What I enjoyed most about the drive was the scenery and watching everyone going about their daily business, appearing so happy and carefree.
We
finally arrived at
Serenity and the first thing we saw was an elephant!
Eeee! After
checking in, we got ready for our first excursion which was an elephant
ride on Lakshimi [the elephant]. First, we fed her some bananas and then were told to sit on top of her. There was no cute saddle or chair, it was just a blanket! I wouldn't say it was the best experience ever, but it was still fun. We took
her to a river where she was bathed by the elephant handler who accompanied her.
After our walk back to the resort
we had a delicious lunch of vegetable Thali which is just a lot of different dipping sauces and curries with chapati, pappadum and rice to dip in.
It was delicious! I pretty much ate that for lunch every day! After that, we decided to relax by the pool instead of
taking the 2nd half of the elephant walk.
 |
| Veg Thali |
 |
| Our room are the windows on the right |
After relaxing, we decided to go on the
plantation walk around the resort which was interesting. There were a lot of trees bearing fruits like mango, blackberry, banana, papaya and
coconut. Some plants had pepper (black) and chili as well. We also walked by a lot of rubber trees, these are the main export of this area. Then, it was dinner on our patio and calling it an early night.
27 August 2011
Serenity
We
woke up early to enjoy breakfast on our patio and then got ready for
our next excursion. We drove through several small villages and the first place we went was to a tea plantation called Connemara Tea
Plantation in Vandi Periyar. We were taken through the plantation and
showed a short presentation on how the tea is made. I didn't realize that
all tea comes from the same plant! (Black, green and white). Then we
were taken to the factory to see how the tea is processed.
We headed to the Tiger Wildlife Preserve to take a riverboat tour of the
sanctuary - while we were waiting we saw a bunch of monkeys, who were very entertaining and definitely not afraid of people.
 |
| National Geographic style |
On the boat,
we saw barking deer, sambar deer, bison, and elephants. It was cool to see them in their natural habitats. The best (worst?) part was that it started down pouring with rain and we had a 3 hour drive back to the resort in the
dark. It wasn't fun, but we made it
safely. Luckily, dinner was waiting for us in our room which was awesome!
 |
| If you look closely, you can see elephants! |
28 August 2011
Privacy/Discovery
Today we were off to the next stop in our
resort tour. We were picked up after breakfast and driven to
Privacy/Discovery. This was our night on the houseboat and was unlike
any of the other houseboats you see in India. We had a bedroom, bathroom
and living room, along with a/c. We also had a deck where we could eat
or lay out on a sun bed. It was the most relaxing thing we had done yet.
 |
| The boat |
 |
| Bedroom |
 |
| Living/Dining area |
 |
| Deck |
For the next 6 hours we rode around Lake Vembaned - we saw other
houseboats, people cleaning laundry, doing their daily activities, work
etc. Animals were plentiful too - we saw different kinds of birds and an otter.
When our boat tour had come to an end, we docked back at
the
Privacy resort and had use of wifi and the pool. We went swimming
for a bit before dinner and then had dinner inside the boat as we had an issue with a crow attacking Chris's food during lunch - hah! That night's sleep was amazing, the rocking of the boat always makes me sleep like a baby!
29 August 2011
Purity
We
had breakfast on the boat while we made our way to our next and last
stop of the resort tour called
Purity. We were greeted by a
friendly staff and shown around the property. It was a beautiful house
which used to be owned by an Italian woman, and I was intrigued as I always am, how people can even find these kinds of places.
After settling in, we had lunch and then found out about other activities we
could do, as well as spa treatments. They are very big on
ayervedic medicine/massage in India, so I decided to try one out. I can't
remember the name of the one I tried but if done over 7-10 days you can
lose 5 lbs. I didnt have a week so I hoped for maybe just the loss of some water weight. Anyway it
was definitely one of the oddest experiences of my life but I slept
like a baby that night. We didn't do much during our first day as it was
raining on and off.
30 August 2011
Purity
After sleeping through some
pretty amazing rain, we had breakfast and tried to figure out what we would
do for the day. We had been commenting that although the trip was nice
and much needed for us as a couple, they should have more activities -
maybe we were just a bit bored. Anyway I went for a special head wrap
at the spa meant to help my hair be smoother and get rid of headaches. [ETA: My hair was not smooth for about the next month after that, seriously. Do not do this!]
Once that was done we decided to take some bikes and ride into the small
village to see if there was any shopping to do or things to see. I
haven't ridden a bike since I was about 14 and it's true what they say
about never forgetting how, but good God, my balance was atrocious and I
spent the next 30 minutes trying not to fall over, run over anyone or get
run over by a bus. After I got real cranky, we turned around and went
back and I gave up. French countryside? Sure, I'll do it. But busy Indian
village? I think not.
Anyway we had lunch and then decided we would go
on a canoe ride. Our waiter had first said it was too hot, but we thought it was
kind of cool and overcast so we assured him it was fine to go early. The
second we stepped into the canoe we saw the ominous grey clouds coming
our way. But we decided to go anyway and went with our little guide who rowed for us and
about 2 minutes later the sky opened up and the monsoon came. The guy
was apparently just waiting for our signal to go back because he just kept
going, so through our laughter, we asked him to turn around. Instead of going back to the hotel
he stopped at his friend's house for shelter which was really interesting. They had an adorable baby and they showed us pictures from their wedding while we
waited out the storm. They were so friendly and nice, offering us tea and talking to us (and probably laughing at us as well). Once the
rain slowed down a bit, we got back into the canoe and went down the lake for
awhile until we realized the rain was not stopping. So we asked the guy
to turn the boat around and go back to the resort. This was not before we had to stop at
his fishing net and then Chris fell into the lake - both very humorous events. Chris was fine, we saw the fish the man caught, all
the while being drenched and then back to the resort we went. The staff had
umbrellas and hand towels waiting for us. Which,
really? I've never been
so wet in m ly life, but I had also not see rain forever so it was kind
of fun :)
After we dried off, I took a nap and then we went off to
the cooking demonstration. They made a fish curry and spicy
squid. Everything was delicious and it was fun to see how the food was
made.
 |
| Spicy calamari |
After dinner we just made our way back to the room and fell
asleep.
31 August 2011
Purity
Today was our last day at our resort - we
decided to take it easy, enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and then went
swimming since the sky was actually a little blue. We laid by the pool for
awhile and then noticed the clouds were rolling in, however it didn't
rain for awhile so we thought about going fishing after lunch. Unfortunately, right after lunch it started raining and didn't let up all day, so it was a lazy
day of reading and sleeping before our last tasty dinner and packing for
our super early (345am) wake up call to catch our flight to Mumbai.
Kerala was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to and if we ever go back to India, I would definitely go back there. The people are friendly and nice, I would just advise not to go during monsoon season :)
After dinner we just made our way back to the room and fell
asleep. 
