A visit to God's own country*

* Kerala's Tourism Slogan
(this goes out to my malayalee peeps - Sonia, Ashish, Ratesh)

Kerala is a very beautiful state, truly worthy of all the praise it gets. Granted I was only able to spend a week there and most of it in a crappy down, but I was able to get some sense of what it has to offer. Kottayam is a sleepy little town in-land in the countryside. There is crap to do, save for looking at palm trees and eating many permutations of coconut dishes (who knew coconut oil had so many uses!). Thank god the meeting was good and I had good company or I probably would have spent most of the week drunk.

During the meeting we were able to do the famous back water tours of Kerala. Kerala's back waters are basically small river systems which act like canals through parts of southern Kerala. They really are picturesque and drifting along the calm waters towards sunset does have a slight magical effect. After a couple of hours of being stuck in a small boat my ADD kicked in was ready to get out. Luckily we were treated to a fancy shmantzy dinner at a local resort that more than made up for the dull moments.

After the meeting was over some friends and I headed down to the beach for a couple of days to chill before going back to work. My incident with Frankie the Nose Worm aside the beach was pretty neat. Alapuzha is a crap town. But Kovalam had an amazing beach with white sand and crystal clear water and just the right amount of surf.

On the downside was the sea of old, white, hairy foreigners that tainted the pristine scenery and forced restaurant's to cater to their sensitive taste buds by serving bland food. And the fact that everything closed at 10pm!! Ugh!!

The upside was the relaxed atmosphere, the fabulous sun, and the fact that I got to walk around in a veshti/dhoti for a few days (for the uninitiated - a veshti is similar to a lungi or a sarong, it is a piece of cotton fabric that is wrapped around the waist almost like a skirt. It is traditional to many parts of Indian and very commonly seen in Kerala. On a personal fun, I now know why women wear skirts. They are so freeing, and refreshing, you get a nice breeze, and just a slight naughty feeling.)

Something that I have come to realize is that I love being in new places, but I hate getting there. Can one say the love traveling if the hate the journey? Someday I may bitch about the 3 day train ride down to Kerala or the 12 hour flight back. Honestly. With SO many engineers and physicists that the world produces why can't someone invent teleportation already!? Ugh!!

Final comment:
Kerala is pretty. Malayalee sounds like Oompa-Loompa language (it sounds just like its script all curly-cue and bubbles). And I left my camera in a friends bag so it will be a while before I can post pictures.