A Drive to Remember..

God's Own Country.......That’s what they say about Kerala right..? Well, I can't really claim to have seen the entire State, but from the very little that I've seen of its magnificent beauty, I'd say God put this place on Earth by mistake. This place should have been right up there in that place called Heaven.

I'd been to Trivandrum about ten years ago and yet I still remember the tranquility and peace I'd felt on the sands of Covalam (or is it Kovalam?) beach... clean, unpolluted, and serene, that’s how it was. Although I’ve heard that now it has become pretty commercialized, there are a lot of other places to choose from.

I've just been to Munnar, a tiny hill station in Kerala, based primarily on tea estates. From Bangalore, it’s a 15 hour trip by bus. Leave at about 8:30 pm in the evening, reach a place called something I don't remember (in Tamil Nadu) where they change buses at about 7 a.m in the morning. From there its a four hour journey through very pretty countryside ...in the beginning, mostly palm trees and lush green fields and the roads are literally through villages....so when you look out of the window , all you see is greenery interspersed with houses after infrequent intervals.

As you go farther from that place whose name I can't recall... you leave the plains and after that its all hilly terrain; you climb up a hill in spirals...you climb up a road and then after a few minutes, you can see the same road just below. For a person like me who suffers from nausea during road journeys, it’s a Catch-22 situation. I get very queasy when traveling in curvy hilly terrain. It’s a pretty funny condition I have; if I close my eyes and not see outside, I generally don’t feel anything. As soon as I see the bus going around curves beyond which roads don't seem to continue, I feel like I'm going to throw up.

Anyway, going back to what I was saying, Catch 22 situation; as in, its such a beautiful ride...with such plush vegetation, it would be a shame if one didn’t see it - I would be missing something really wonderful.. BUT ... the moment I see outside, and see that the road the bus is on is so narrow that it’s a mystery as to how the bus is not falling from the sides, I regret opening my eyes and immediately go back to my colorless world of shut eyes.

The closer we got to Munnar, the climate got cooler, the vegetation got different and the view even more fantastic...hills with a carpet of tea plantations layered all over like a protective sheet, lakes in the valleys reflecting the blue glory of a clear sky.....the cool breeze imbuing a new life in our tired selves...soon palm trees were replaced by tall Eucalyptus trees, majestic in their white splendor.

As a kid, I used to wonder at the amount of hard work that people go to just to paint the branches of a tree white; I also used to be amazed thapeople would even go to all the thinnest branches and paint them. There used to be this tall Eucalyptus tree on the way to school, (in Shillong) and almost everyday I used to gaze in wonderment at this tree. I would think....'when do they paint its branches? Must be at night because I never see any one climbing the tree during the day……….’, it was years till I got to know the actual artist at work (Nature i.e. if you’re also under the misconception).

Though we were dead tired, that four-hour journey felt like a joyride through a wonderland. :):) Thus we reached Munnar, a place which I'll not describe because I’ll get carried away...and this post will end after a long, long, long time. All I can say is that if you’re frustrated with the fast, polluted and noisy city life, Munnar is the place to go to refresh your soul.