Our Trip to Kumarakam

It was a Sunday morning, we started off from my house at 7am. Some 3 friends from Honeywell, Bangalore were here in Kerala for my friends marriage and I was the person incharge to take them around. I had planned to take them to Kumarakam, some 50kms from my house.

It was a beautiful Kerala morning, even I was excited about the trip coz this was my first to Kumarakam. I have heard lots about it - today was my day to experience it :) Nice Hindi songs played on the car audio system as we sped along toward Tiruvalla. After Tiruvalla I had to stop at lot of Hotels & Restaurants along the MC Road coz the crowd wanted to have the popular kerala breakfast of Appam or Puttu (steamcake). Finally we found a place at Chingavam which served Appam. With everyone having their stomach's full to heart's content we again moved towards Kottayam.

We took a left turn from Bakery Junction, Kottayam. The road got narrower but the beauty on both sides of the road was superb. We stopped many times by the side of the road to take some awesome snaps.

Finally we reached Kumarakam at 9:45am. Parked our car in front of the KTDC Hotel and went in search of a boat. Actually the Boat owners came in search of us. The small boats costed Rs350 per hour, the Big boat cost Rs8000 per day (The big boats have 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, Air Conditioner, Flat screen tv...). Well, ours was a small boat and had space to house some 8 people. We booked for a 3 hour boat ride coz that was all the time we had.

Our boat ride started at 10am. There were lot of beautiful boats by the side of the river. 10 min into the ride we docked by the side of a thick forest. We were entering into Kumarakam Bird Sanctuary. Our Boat driver took us into the bird sancutary showing us where to look for birds. It seems we were a little late, we could have had a better chance of seeing lot of birds if we had come as early at 7:30 am (boat rides start at 7am). Anyway we were able to see the White crane and the black egret (Nir Kaka). We had time to pose for some more snaps before we boarded back on our comfy boat.

Our boat was venturing into the Vembanad Lake. The scenes on both sides of the lake was awesome. I already started getting ideas about spending my honeymoon here :P The climate was cool and cloudy with light breeze. We felt like floating in heaven. One guy in our pack commented "You are really lucky dude to have born here in Kerala". True, I thanked God, the sights were awesome and I never took time to admire it. I was really lucky after all :)

The light drizzle half way through our journey added to more excitement. There were even guys who wanted to dance on the boat. Thank God he didn't, otherwise he could have overturned the boat. The Vembanad lake was huge with lot of beautiful sights, really don't want to cheapen it by putting it into words. One side of the lake was Allapuzha, another awesome place to go to. There were Chinese fishing nets by the side of the lake, introduced by Chinese Traders many many centuries back. We could have spent the whole day there itself, but sadly our boat ride got over and we were back at the Boat Jetty at sharp 1pm. We had our lunch at KTDC hotel by the lake side.

Then our group had to split as some friends had to go to Ernakulam to catch a bus back to Bangalore. We all had a really nice time at Kumarakam and I am sure this is one beautiful memory that can never be erased.

I didn't say my goodbye's to Kumarakam, as I was sure that I would be back very soon :)