I actually never thought I would be saying that, but after spending a month in a desert climate, I am so excited to spend the next 5 days in the humidity!
I left Jaipur early this morning and said goodbye to a few fellow IBMers and made my way to the airport with half of them, Edina, Luis, Jaakko, Elin and Martin. We were all on the same flight and heading to the southern tip of India to Kerala, known as God's Country. What an odd bunch we are, from the US, Mexico, Hungary, Finland, Sweden and Spain (Charo was meeting us there).
I was very impressed with the flight, who knew that SpiceJet was such a nice airline. The planes were very clean, they were on time (in fact early), the pilot kept updating everyone on the cricket score and Edina and I had a row to ourselves. Not too shabby. We did spend 2.5 hours in the Mumbai airport, which wasn't very exciting, but very clean and had decent food. Landing and taking off in Mumbai though was very eye opening, you fly right over a very large slum area. The city is massive compared to Jaipur and the poverty is apparent from the air.
Two hours after leaving Mumbai we emerged from the clouds and it was green and plush for as far as the eye could see. After being in the desert for a month, this was just amazing. Tea plantations, palm trees, water, everything was so spread out, it was heaven. It's kind of like seeing the sun for the first time after days of rain. As soon as we walked off the plane in Kochin we could feel the humidity, it was so nice! Very small airport, we grabbed our bags and met our driver who was waiting for us. We said goodbye to Elin and Martin who were heading another direction and made our way out to Fort Kochi, about an hour drive South West.
We booked a guest house/inn sight unseen, based on tripadvisor ratings and it is perfect. It's a central location, beautiful building, decent size and very clean rooms and the water pressure in the shower was awesome. I forgot to mention that my shower in Jaipur was sort of a trickle so I had to use the little cup hanging in the shower to get the shampoo out of my hair.
We got in around 6 pm, had a welcome drink of ginger lime soda on the roof near the tiny pool and decided to grab dinner here. I had a piece of fish (yay, no more vegetarian!) and some pulao (rice with veg, cashews, raisins and tons of fresh spices), which was pretty good.
Tomorrow we are off to explore the local historic town, see where Vasco de Gama was originally buried and also see Jew Street/Jew town, one of the oldest jewish neighborhoods in India. We'll be here at "Tissa's Inn" for another night and will figure out the rest of our plans tomorrow. Probably will spend Monday on a boat in the backwaters and then head up to the hills to a tea/spice plantation.
I'm really liking the feel of this place. Can't describe it, will post pictures tomorrow after exploring. Oh, I have my PC, I decided to bring it to "research" the rest of the trip. Off to bed now, but first I need to kill these two mosquitoes in my room...
I left Jaipur early this morning and said goodbye to a few fellow IBMers and made my way to the airport with half of them, Edina, Luis, Jaakko, Elin and Martin. We were all on the same flight and heading to the southern tip of India to Kerala, known as God's Country. What an odd bunch we are, from the US, Mexico, Hungary, Finland, Sweden and Spain (Charo was meeting us there).
I was very impressed with the flight, who knew that SpiceJet was such a nice airline. The planes were very clean, they were on time (in fact early), the pilot kept updating everyone on the cricket score and Edina and I had a row to ourselves. Not too shabby. We did spend 2.5 hours in the Mumbai airport, which wasn't very exciting, but very clean and had decent food. Landing and taking off in Mumbai though was very eye opening, you fly right over a very large slum area. The city is massive compared to Jaipur and the poverty is apparent from the air.
Two hours after leaving Mumbai we emerged from the clouds and it was green and plush for as far as the eye could see. After being in the desert for a month, this was just amazing. Tea plantations, palm trees, water, everything was so spread out, it was heaven. It's kind of like seeing the sun for the first time after days of rain. As soon as we walked off the plane in Kochin we could feel the humidity, it was so nice! Very small airport, we grabbed our bags and met our driver who was waiting for us. We said goodbye to Elin and Martin who were heading another direction and made our way out to Fort Kochi, about an hour drive South West.
We booked a guest house/inn sight unseen, based on tripadvisor ratings and it is perfect. It's a central location, beautiful building, decent size and very clean rooms and the water pressure in the shower was awesome. I forgot to mention that my shower in Jaipur was sort of a trickle so I had to use the little cup hanging in the shower to get the shampoo out of my hair.
We got in around 6 pm, had a welcome drink of ginger lime soda on the roof near the tiny pool and decided to grab dinner here. I had a piece of fish (yay, no more vegetarian!) and some pulao (rice with veg, cashews, raisins and tons of fresh spices), which was pretty good.
Tomorrow we are off to explore the local historic town, see where Vasco de Gama was originally buried and also see Jew Street/Jew town, one of the oldest jewish neighborhoods in India. We'll be here at "Tissa's Inn" for another night and will figure out the rest of our plans tomorrow. Probably will spend Monday on a boat in the backwaters and then head up to the hills to a tea/spice plantation.
I'm really liking the feel of this place. Can't describe it, will post pictures tomorrow after exploring. Oh, I have my PC, I decided to bring it to "research" the rest of the trip. Off to bed now, but first I need to kill these two mosquitoes in my room...
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