Sunday 26 April 2015
Highlights: Kochi Beach with locals showing off!
Today was the start of the second part of the Highlights of India tour which is also offered separately as South India – Kerala Dreaming 7 day tour. To get there this meant being in the hotel lobby at 3.15 am for the trip to the airport.
I did all I could to make sure that the Air India flight, that left Delhi at 5.35 am and arrived at 8.45 am, was ‘incident’ free from my upset system and thank goodness I succeeded. Unfortunately Air India lost some bags from another G Adventure group but not mine :). It took around an hour by private car from airport to arrive at the starting apartment for this trip around 10.30 am.
Even in that 1 hour I could see the difference from Northern India. The environment is obviously more tropical and green. The weather was a little ‘colder’ at 35 but way more humid.
Around 4 pm the weather suddenly changed to a thunderstorm. I was to learn later this has been happening for a few weeks, hot during the day, thunderstorm near dusk.
Our Chief Experience Officer for the next 7 days is Sajin Basil. There are only two other passengers, Kanae from Japan, and Andrea from Switerland. So a very small group. We went of a very informative short orientation walk that included the local beach. As this was Sunday lots of locals were here and quite a few showing off with backflips and handstands.
The walk told me that the people are happy here. There were no hawkers or beggars but there were lots of smiling kids. Now to get get my stomach in order.
Nathan's Insights 