God's own country .. Kerala !!! #munnar #thekkady #alleppey #kumarakom #kochi

Kerala... as they say it's "God's Own Country" 🏞️.. Me and Anki always wanted to visit Kerala. After weeks of planning... the day came. We left from our office's early as we had to catch Shivneri bus🚌 from Pune to Mumbai. We boarded train🚂 from Panvel railway station at 6:30 Pm and reached Ernakulum station next day after 24 hours of travel. As soon as we came out of Ernakulum station, I saw a guy in 40's holding a big board mentioning .. " Welcome!!! Mr. Jyotin Prachand to Kerala" ... :) so we were officially welcomed into Kerala. After more than 3 hours of ride we finally reach our first destination Munnar😎.

We woke up early next day.. had delicious breakfast and started for our first spot "Eravikulum National Park". After getting tickets for the park we boarded minibus 🚃arranged by park authorities for the tourists. Bus took us up the hill and we were dropped at a point from where we need to explore on foots. This Park is famous (only) for a endangered species Nilgiri tahr🦌 which you can easily spot. I took some snaps of Nilgiri Tahr.

Next spot was Tea Museum.. we saw a small motion picture🎥 about history of tea production in India.. found it very interesting. Then we visited the museum where we were shown how Tea is manufactured and we saw various kind of Tea's. We came out of museum full hungry...driver uncle took us to a nice hotel where we packed our stomachs with various delicacies🍲🍛.

After lunch we went to Mattupetty Dam which was around 10 Kms from Munnar... view from Dam was awesome. We took many pictures and while coming back to our hotel we also visited a flower 🌻 Garden. It had huge variety of flowers... I took snaps of most of them. Later at around 6 Pm we reached our hotel back. After dinner we explored Munnar town on our foots.

After visiting queen of hills we left for the king of jungle ⛰️. At around 8 Am in morning we left from Munnar to Thekkady. Complete route till Thekkady was scenic... we stopped on the route for... waterfalls... foggy ghat Section... tea plantations and spice garden. Spice garden was most interesting one... lady guide showed us various types of spices... how they are grown... their usage and lot of scientific ... botanical might be right word...yess lots and lots of botanical stuff. We bought some good stuff from that garden and later at noon time we reached our hotel "Aranya Niwas" good thing about hotel is it's in core jungle and the room had one complete wall made of glass with full view of jungle (bit scary at night )... and since hotel was in jungle we were not allowed to leave the hotel after 6 Pm. So we could not explore Thekkady Town... we did time pass in gaming room of hotel where we played carom then table tennis and later in swimming pool🏊.

Usually you might expect jungle ride to be by road but in Thekkady its boat ⛵ride. And this is proper national park so all the stuff we missed in Eravikulum national park was here. We took the tickets for boat.. there were special boats for the tourists staying at KTDC. We started our boat ride.. all were wearing life jackets which is mandatory. Spotted various kinds of birds.. deers.. wild Boars and elephants.. boat ride was cool. After boat ride we rushed to the hotel and had breakfast...

Later we left for Kumarakom. On the way, we stopped for some waterfalls and after around 3 1/2 hrs of journey we reached Kumarakom. Kumarakom is famous for bird sanctuary 🦜 and our hotel "waterscapes" was most beautiful hotel we stayed in our journey. There were small canals all around and our hotel room was above one of them and in front of our room was mighty Vembnad Lake. We had lunch in hotel cafeteria which had beautiful view of lake. Anki took ayurvedic massage and I spent my evening swimming🏊 in infinity pool.

Next day woke-up early morning as we had to explore the bird sanctuary. We went walking in the bird sanctuary... couldn't spot much of the birds... after lot of exploration we saw a small boat by the river. An old uncle asked us whether we want a ride, we went ahead... from the river he took us to the Vembanad lake. Best things was we reached to a spot in the lake where we were surrounded by beautiful water lilly's🌷. After around 1 hr uncle dropped us at place near our hotel, we had breakfast and left for our next destination "Alleppey".

After around one and half hour of journey we reached the point where we had to board our house boat in Alleppey. At around 12 Noon we boarded houseboat, there were only two person in the crew one captain and one cook. Cook uncle was national swimmer once... he told us lot of stuff about water transport used in/around Alleppey. After around one hour... our house boat stopped for the lunch. Cook uncle made very delicious food... we were licking our fingers. Boat started again, we ventured from one river to another ... and then to another.. at the end our house boat reached Vembanad lake. After exploring the lake at the evening our boat stayed at place for night stay. Watching sunset was best thing.. I saw fireflies🥳 after long time... :).

Next morning... had hot coffee prepared by cook uncle... probably the best coffee ☕ I ever had. Soon we were back to the place from where we boarded the houseboat and then in Car. We were moving towards our last destination in Kerala... "Kochi". After around 2 hrs of drive we reached our hotel "Bolgatty Palace". Hotel was a heritage site and was a palace once... Hotel had really nice paintings. After having lunch at Hotel we moved ahead to explore kochi. We saw jew town.. palace... various churches and chinese fishing nets. Kochi was very hot that time.. later had dinner and went for tight sleep.

Last day was very chilled... we explored Kochi market first. Later in the noon we saw Kathakali performance. Reached our hotel early and spent rest of the time watching pictures of our trip. Next day we left for Pune ending our trip to this beautiful state🤗.