Rendezvous with Popular Kerala

Last week I was in Kerala for a short trip covering the central Kerala and the popular destinations like Munnar, Kochi and northern Allepy. When you travel to Kerala, you always have it in your mind that you are visiting one of the ’10 best destinations’ in the world as rated by National Geographic. Additionally I had heard all kind of stories from my Mallu friends who never fail to introduce themselves by saying I am from ‘God’s own country’.
My impressions of Kerala after visiting Kerala: it’s a nice place, picturesque and quite. Noticeable point was that the whole area that we traveled was very clean unlike most of the rural areas in the other parts of the country. Every small house on top of a hill was well painted, most of the times in a combination of green and white (don’t know if this is regulatory requirement like the walled city of Jaipur). Road were well laid out even in the interiors.
Munnar tea estates look like green carpets spread over the hills, and the women plucking tea leaves look very romantic and in that place only thing you find missing is the accompanying music. The tea museum is good; there is demonstration of the tea production and grading process, along with a small history of tea growing in Kannan Devan hills. But I found the ticket too costly for a place where you can not spend more than 30 mins or so. Apart from that there are a few dams in that area, what is interesting is that the Kerala electricity board has developed areas around their dams and after every few kms you have boating sites and resorts developed. Development of multiple small points like this keeps the crowding and cleanliness in check and should be earning substantial revenues for KEB, as every site had an entry ticket and the boating tickets were also priced for high end traveler. Like western countries the tour routes seem to be pretty standard as we kept bumping into same people at every site and location. It also seem to be pitched for overseas traveler, otherwise things like a ‘honey bee tree’ may not be on the itinerary.
Kochi being the big city, has the all familiar traffic and pollution, but I found the ferry trips across to the Kochi Fort, Wellingdon island and Mataan Cherry very interesting. Don’t know how they manage it, the tickets costs like Rs 2.50, which means in 5 Rs you can have a round trip to and from any island to any island. In Fort Kochi you can see a Marine Museum, another museum and a synagogue. You can visit a small beach and see Chinese fishing nets. In Jews Town you can see a lot of good antique items, some things that your parent’s generation would have thrown away because they thought it to be unfashionable and now you go back to buy the same at ten thousand times the cost that your grandparents might have paid for it. Again the whole street is pitched for overseas traveler. Even the spices that you get for x in the next street are sold at 3x in this street. You can see ubiquitous Kashmiri guys selling their usual stuff and interestingly flirting away with women visiting their shops. You can cover the whole of island in less than half a day and actually there is nothing which is too striking.
We took a village trip which was day long and included a small cruise and lunch on a houseboat in backwaters, a visit to a typical village house in Kerala with a spice garden and almost every spice and herb in their backyard, a lime factory where lime is produced from sea shells, punting along the canals, plucking of fresh coconuts and visiting a coir making unit. It was an extremely well packaged trip, with fairly well trained guys handling the trip. Rarely do you see the guides in India trying to strike a conversation with tourists and trying to read their minds and respond accordingly. And all this was reasonably priced at Rs 425/- per person. If we want to develop the tourism economy, we need more such packaging and well serviced offerings.
The things that I missed out in this trip were a local dance performance, a walk in the tea gardens and spending some quite time on a beach (not sure if there is a good and quite beach around Kochi). And of course could not manage time to go and take the famous Kairali massage. Could have done some good photography if I had a better camera...
Over-all I think Kerala is bit over-rated; there are so many places which are much better tourist destinations in terms of the sheer natural beauty. But the attitude of the people, the tourist friendly orientation and awareness that tourism is a part of their economy is definitely that needs to travel to all the places that want to see themselves on the world tourism map. The attitude of Keralites was probably second only to Goa in India, though it may still be sometime before it reaches the level that you see in Europe.