Rainy Beach Time at Varkala - Nov 22 2014

Varkala is a nice and popular beach town, with the main shops and restaurants situated on a beautiful cliff. We decided to "pamper" ourselves and go a bit over budget with a room in Mango Villa owned by a lovely French family. 

We didn't get to enjoy the beach too much because it was cloudy and rainy most of the days, but still had a fun relaxing time. I finally got to do some yoga and Daniel finally put his running shoes to use and went running a few times (attracting strange looks from locals). We enjoyed tasty fresh juices at the wonderful Juice Shack and some good Italian and Tibetan food. Many restaurants had interesting nighttime entertainment and we endured some terrible live music and amateur Bollywood dancing with our overpriced cocktails and the great company of Megan, Kat and Ashley from England. Since the weather wasn't getting better, after 4 days we journeyed further south on a train to Kanyakumari, the famous "tip" of India. 

Backwaters in Alleppey - Nov 20 2014

Located on the famous and beautiful backwaters of Kerala, Alleppey doesn't quite live up to its title "Venice of the east," but it is a nice place and makes for a good base to explore the backwaters from. We originally planned to do the popular houseboat trip but since it was expensive and we heard from other travelers that it is not worth it, we decided to do a canoe trip instead. We booked through Anthony of Paradise Inn Yoga Retreat who we met at the lovely coffee shop he also owns on the canal- Cafe Paradiso. We ended up staying one night in his guesthouse which was nice, after not being too happy with our first choice of accommodation.

The canoe trip was nice and peaceful only perhaps a bit long, and because we were In a small boat we could go into the smaller channels and observe village life (and many women doing their laundry). We had an ok lunch served on a banana leaf at one of the villages with three nice siblings form Sweden who were on he same tour on a different boat. Feeling like we've seen enough of Aleppey we left the next morning to Varkala. 

Tea Plantations of Munnar - Nov 16 2014

From the suffocating humidity and vicious Mosquitoes of Kochi we happily escaped to the cool green hills of Munnar. We found a nice guesthouse (SMM Guesthouse @750R a night) that was a bit pricey for our standards at the time but very comfortable and equipped with in room wi-fi and a plasma tv. The next morning we did a quite touristy rickshaw tour to main points of interest around town in which we got to see some wild elephants and enjoyed nice views of the famous and beautiful tea plantations of Munnar. The next day we went on a day trek (organized through the neighboring guesthouse- Green View) with two other couples from New Zealand and Germany. We walked around the tea plantations and also some different spice plantations and learned a bit about the history of tea in India, the life of the tea pickers and about many local plants, trees and fruits.

Left with a taste for more we booked another trek for the next day through the same people. This time we were joined by 5 other friendly travellers from England and one American. we climbed another peak with more wonderful views and finished the day with a visit to the tea factory and also had nice lunch together at Rapsy's restaurant in town. 

In our last evening we had a surprisingly great dinner courtesy of lonely planet at the Sree Mahaveer restaurant, where we discovered first discovered kaju (cashew nut) curry which became one of our favorites. Next morning we hopped on a bus and headed to Alleppey, sometimes referred to as "Venice of the East". 

eating green mango by the dam

 chilli bhaji

trekking buddies #1

cardamon picker

trekking buddies #2

Kathakali in Kochi - Nov 14 2014

We arrived late in the evening to Kochi aka Cochin after a long, uncomfortable and annoying 15 hour ride in four different local buses (it was supposed to be eight hours and two buses only).

We have to say that Kochi is a nice town but a bit overrated in our opinion. The town offers some interesting  sights like ancient Chinese fishing nets which they claim the fishermen still use today, several churches and one of the only synagogues in India. As any touristic town Kochi is scattered with many souvenir shops, travel agencies and backpacker restaurants that are quite the same as anywhere else. We do recommend Kashi Art Cafe, a nice place with a modern look and good western food.

But the "highlight" for us in Kochi was the 3 hour long Kathakali show, a traditional south Indian dance that is preformed only by men that wear a lot of makeup (when buying a ticket for the show you are also invited to view the one hour long makeup session which we came to see but left in the middle). The show itself is interesting at first, very different than anything else we've seen but it was a bit too long and repetitive for our taste. We also saw a local martial arts demonstration at the same cultural center which was interesting and impressive (and thankfully much shorter than the Kathakali).