this jan 2009 we'd been to kerala . i would'nt exactly call it a trip cos its more of a pilgrimage, less of a trip . our destination being the ananthapadmanaba temple in thiruvanathapuram. so we started our journey beginning 28th jan night from Bangalore on the ever crowded kanyakumari express . since we had our tickets reserved there werein for no hassles the journey was smooth . what really caught upon my attention was the completely electrified rail routes from bangalore and untill kanyakumari . this is something i had never expected and considering the fact that most rail routes within karnataka mostly run on diesel engines i felt have our state been left out in getting the proper rail infrastructure .
the good thing about electric trains were they made less noise, drove much faster, they had uniform torque and most importantly were pollution free. anyways moving on the night was smooth, i had a good sleep(apart from one incident which goes censored) and woke up at about 4 AM in the morning to enjoy some fresh air standing by the door, however i couldn hold on standing for long as it was very chilling. the one thing about this train was even though its destination was kanyakumari in tamil nadu it largely covered most of kerala in its journey ,even crossed andhrapradesh on the way.
soon the sun was up and people started flowing into our reserved compartments with open tickets they were mostly students and office goers this did'nt matter too much because train was mostly empty by then an there was regular rotation of people getting down and flowing in. our destination was reached by 3.45 a perfect half an hour late which was very much upholding our railway tradition.
i had to negotiate my grandparents across the stairs which was a lil difficult for them considering that my grandfather hadnt eaten anythin that whole day travelling, he's a very Orthodox man doesnt eat food without bathing anyways that's his choice on our part we had packed enough to have during the journey and so we were decently full. the next task was too search a room in the city which i was lot worried about anyways we somehow managed to strike a economic deal in a hotel close to the station and the rooms very very clean and looked good.
then it was bath time and we all had bath and got ourselves ready for the ananthapadmanaba temple by 5 o clock evening we had the darshan and managed to get back to the rooms by 8.30 .the thing about the temple was absolutely no entry without dhoti and we weren allowed to take inside any mobile or camera, which i felt was a lil harsh.
talking about the temple is some thin i really would love to , the temple complex is huge i happen to hear that it was the largest temple in kerala , the architecture , the carvings, the gopura were magnificent. the deity in the sanctum sanatorium again was very pleasing to see .lord vishnu in sleeping position in the name of anantha padmanaba. i was very satisfied by the way the preists conducted themsleves considering what we usually see in some temples about they being only after our dakshina rather than performing the pooja with all fearfulness.
the next day we left room by 2.30 am in the morning again for the same temple and our puja's were finished by 6 and so therefore we had the whole day to roam about thiruvananthapuram.
leaving no opportunity un seized we hired a qualis for the city sight seeing for which we spent 1400 all inclusives. some of the places we then saw were atkul devi temple which happens to be called shabarimala of women, then we went to the kovalam beach, here i have to mention about the leela kovalam hotel to its adjacent this was somethin like a masterpiece of pleasure. from what i could see the hotel looked splendid.
carrying on we then went to sangamukham beach which is right opposite to the trivendrum international airport, however the link roads to the airport appeared to be of a very sub standard quality some kind of a galli road if i can say then our next destination was Veli village park which had a nice water body right adjacent to the sea . we tried our hands on boating however we gave up the idea after knowing that the prices were too costly. then further moving we then went to the city museum and park, visited the zoo, i would rate the zoo very average it hardly had any animals and it lacked maintanence however the garden looked attractive
we came out of the garden and the driver drove us back to out lodge and there it was the end of our trip . we packed our luggage and boarded the trivendrum-chennai super fast express we had a nice tight sleep considering all of us were tired.
we got down at salem from where we initially planned to take a bus to bangalore however to our luck we found a passenger train to bangalore which was to leave to bangalore almost ready to depart we quickly climbed on to this train and reached bangalore by 10.30 am. so that was the end of our kerala trip.
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