Of Friend's Weddings, Beach Holidays and Other Stuff...

The story of my trip to Kerala. Or rather, to a single beach in Kerala. Not a travelogue. Not a guide on what to do there, what to see, where to eat, what to buy. I am too lazy to do all that. But not lazy enough to not put down a long post on the trip. If only to remind myself that I need to get out of Bombay more often than I do.

So, here goes...

It all started when a friend, who has grown a few inches purely from the amount of leg-pulling we have done to him, announced that he is getting married. Now, in spite of my personal opinion that getting married is a bit masochistic (I don't mean it in the literal sense of too much pain for some sex... or maybe I do!), 4 of us decided to combine the wedding presence (no presents, blessings only) with a short holiday. 

Day I

So, we take a flight to Trivandrum which thankfully took off on time and landed only 1/2 hour late. The extra time was well utilized by yours truly to read the tarot card reading on the in-flight magazine which predicted very accurately that I would be travelling on holiday during the month. I still wonder how they got that one correct! Anyways, it also said that my love life is going to pick up, but then one out of two predictions is not too bad. 

We were picked up by Ambi, the go-to man of the resort we were staying at, in an Amby (yeah, yeah, I know I already cracked that non-joke on twitter, but then not all of you follow me on twitter. End of strategic self-promotion). We reached our resort on NelliKunnu beach by 2.00 pm. (The resort, by the way, is right on the beach. Which might give Jairam Ramesh some CRZy nightmares, but for us, it was a dream!)

Of course, we did pick up a dozen bottles of beer and some vodka on the way. After all, you never know how safe the water is in these parts, and one can never be too careful. Best to drink something distilled. An awesome lunch of rice + fish curry, accompanied by some chilled beer fruit punch, induced the kind of stupor that is best enjoyed by placing oneself on the hammock strung between the coconut trees.

The stupor wore off by evening (maybe the fruit punch didn’t have the requisite punch), and though the water wasn’t too inviting (the sea was a bit rough, the waves were huge and the sand was a bit too gravelly), I firmly believe that going to a beach and not getting into the water is an act of sin which should be punishable by drowning. Unless it is a Bombay beach in which case people who do step into the dirty water deserve to drown.

A perfect sunset rounded off a perfect day, but then we are young people and our ‘day’ starts only after sunset. So, we decided to let our hair down (ok, people who are pointing at the near bald head and laughing, shut up!), and finished the day with some vodka and fish curry + rice + fish fry. And kappa, which may sound greek to you, but is just good old tapioca.

Day II

I woke up early (at 6.30 am!) to take a nice little walk on the beach while the others slept off their hangover. After an hour of loitering around, where I was the only guy at the beach at that time (not counting the stray dog that kept following me as if this was the Himalayas and I was Yudhishthira), all I remember is coming back and lying on the hammock at 7.30... only to be woken up by friends for breakfast at 9.30. Went back to the hammock, sat on it, and the damn thing snapped. Maybe the ropes were weak, maybe it was the extra-heavy breakfast, but we are polite and do not laugh at fat people. Especially if the fat people happen to be us. The whole day was spent lazing on the sun-deck, with a old Jeffrey Archer short stories book (Twist in the Tale) which I was reading for the n-th time. The sun shining through the coconut trees, nice breeze, a full stomach, a beer bottle and a good book – this is what heaven should look like, I guess.

Went into the water again in the evening, and got sand in all kinds of places (I mean, my ears) and watched one more nice perfect sunset. The friends wanted to watch ManU-Chelsea so we scouted around for a TV (since our resort didn't have one) and after walking up and down Kovalam beach without any luck, decided to go to the Taj Vivanta’s bar and watched the match in nice comfort. 

I have a theory: all my trips have to be blessed by Murphy at least once. But, I’ll spare you (and myself, when I read this some months later) the details of how Air India made us pull whatever little hair we have left out with their “now we fly, now we don’t, now we do” routine on the return journey.

And thus close with how we returned home with sunburn, a hangover, some badly clicked photographs, ½ kg banana chips and some good memories...

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PS: Some of you, especially the ones who are polite enough to call me a friend, would be bombarded with the above badly clicked photographs in your mail shortly. For the others, I hope the (nearly) thousand words I have written paint a good enough picture. Stop reading and go take a holiday already!