To find the perfect place, one has to persevere. We learnt that all too well when we decided to take a trip all along the coast of Kerala in southern India. To reach the coast, we had to travel through some pretty rough places.
We are a small family of 3, my baby girl being only 18 months at the time. Ro, my husband is an impatient man with a mission – travel as much as possible and make it as inconvenient as possible for self and said companions. That, apparently, is the perfect way to cover more ground and learn more about the place. Case in point – a whirlwind journey from Bangalore to Kerala to find the perfect beach and to know more about our own country.
So we arrived in Bangalore, a huge metropolitan city in south India, (note: we had arrived just 2 days before from Beijing to Delhi and onto Bangalore) only to be getting onto a bus to Ooty, a small but beautiful hill station in Tamil Nadu. The bus station in Bangalore – Majestic – was easily the world’s most chaotic place. It was jam packed with people shouting, buses honking for no reason and the smells were just overpowering, even for us Indians.
The bus ride was cheap at only USD 15 for the 3 of us. The bus left at 9:45 pm and deposited us at Ooty at 5:30 am. The ride was extremely uncomfortable, even with us occupying 5 seats. Talk about only getting our money’s worth.
Udagamandalam, or Ooty was deliciously cold and fresh after the bus ride from hell. But as the day dawned, we realized that there was nothing more to the place apart from a smelly lake. I had heard the place was beautiful, only I did not see it and had no patience to explore further.
This was definitely not our destination. So we decided to hop on to Coonoor, another pretty hill station just a few hours away by ‘toy train’, complete with steam engine and baby bogeys. The cost was a joke at 20 cents per person and you got to ride in this amazing-looking antique which took you at a slow 25km/hour and passed through numerous tunnels. The crowd was boisterous and full of youngsters screaming every time the train entered a tunnel.
The train stopped at this really quaint looking station where people stared at us like we were from another planet. The reason – I was trying to open SW's pram. The people had obviously never seen a collapsible pram before, much less seeing a mother trusting her baby to a contraption like that.
No surprises, we did not like Coonoor either. The place was polluted and teeming with people. We were looking for a sleepy hill town to spend a few days in. Is that too much to ask? I suggested we move on to Coimbatore, a major town in Tamil Nadu from where we could get a bus to Kerala, aptly dubbed ‘God’s own country’. We could not find any trains so we decided to hire a cab to Coimbatore. My baby and I decided to rest our tired feet in a small tea stall; frankly, it was my feet that were protesting against this sudden change from their usual sedentary lifestyle…I live in Beijing and my normal day has none of all the drama and strenuous activity. But I would not miss this for the world. I admit I was not enjoying it at the time, but now when I look back, I am glad we didn’t waste time in any of these inconsequential places because there is always something better lined up ahead.
We finally got a cabbie to drive us in a nice A/c car to Coimbatore. We bargained heavily and got the price lowered from USD26 to USD17. This was a great plan as just after two and a half hours in Coonoor, we were back on the road again.
My baby was blissfully asleep when we finally stopped for lunch…our first proper meal of the day at Madikerai. We reached Coimbatore within two hours.
I had heard that Coimbatore is a very traditional town and the people are not very open-minded. We learnt this firsthand as we were turned away from every single hotel. Was it our faces? We are Indian; we just did not look the part. Complete with pram and rucksacks, all the locals mistook us for some ‘unclean’ foreigners and plainly lied to our faces saying all the rooms were full. In 7 hotels, all the rooms were full. Imagine the level of frustration when you were lugging a crying baby and backpacks in a 40 degrees heat wave in the afternoon.
We finally found a hotel which took pity on our sunburnt faces and gave us a shitty room at the most atrocious price – USD33 a night. We collapsed and were dead to the world for 3 hours. We collectively decided that spending a night here is a complete waste of time and decided to push forward to Allepy, the first town in Kerala on our agenda. I have relatives there who had kindly offered to host us for 3 nights.
10:30 pm found us impatiently waiting for the night bus to Kerala. We would arrive at 4:00am in the morning and our stop was Chertala railway station and we were to stay in a small village near Allepy called Vailar. Parents and baby were fast asleep as the bus started moving.
The next morning dawned with us staring sleep eyed at unbroken green and the most peaceful vista – coconut trees, dirt roads and the refreshing smell of morning rain amid the calm backwaters of Vailar. We were the only people for miles around. Welcome to God’s own country – Kerala. We could not help but wonder – what a mad 24 hours!
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