Day 11 - The Dream Come True - The Adventure Trips

30-12-2015

1912 KM

Satish is a very good bathroom singer too. Of course I wouldn't have identified this talent, if we would not have taken a room at Fort Kochi. Let me start of with the experience we had till now, while he is refining his singing talent.

That was the first time we had put the tent in the beach side last night. First challenge was to get Shakila near by our 1BHK, next was to get supporting stones, as the nails wouldn't fit in the sand. With the windy climate, we struggled a bit to put the outer layer of the tent. While Satish was busy with the yesterday's write up, we could able to feel warm and humid condition inside our 1 BHK.

At around 1:30 AM I heard, "Santhosh, get up re, lets pack up and start to Kochi". I was wondering what's wrong and saw Satish drenched in sweat, sitting in front of me. I was almost lost in my dreams, when he tried waking me up. Hopefully the toddy worked very well on me but not on Satish. I could realize then, it was so humid that the two layers of our dress were looking like just drenched in rain. As I badly wanted to get back to my dream world, I told Satish to take the sleeping mat and sleep outside so he would get some fresh air. Satish went out side and laid down on one of the boats available in front of the sea beach. He relaxed out side for an hour and later made some aerodynamic arrangement with the tent. With that arrangement I could also feel some amount of fresh air in side the tent along with Satish's presence. After all those western ghat chilling experience this was a dead opposite experience.

I woke up by 6 AM and let Satish sleep for little more time. I was giggling at Satish's situation last night and wanted to make sure he get enough sleep. Mararikulam beach was very pleasant in morning with very few people around. As Sun started climbing up, I saw many fishermen's getting ready with their nets and boats for their days job. I did witness the complete process of getting a fishing boat from the shore to the beach, wow it's a complete team work. I just walked around the beach to get some clicks and was back soon to check on Satish. Later he woke up to pack up the luggage. Most of the eyes around were busy watching us packing our luggage back on Shakila.

Mararikulam Beach

Our tent Mararikulam Beach

It was not even around 200 meters drive from the beach, there was a sudden heavy pour. We weren't really prepared for a rain, after the hot chamber experience we had last night. We quickly parked the vehicle in a shade to avoid getting wet, where couple of more local joined us. After a enquiry, we understood this was the first rain happening during winter and they were even surprised. The rain didn't last long. After a quick kata chai, we headed towards Kochi. We had decided last day to take the beach road rather than the normal highway to reach Kochi. And our decision was perfect. It was an amazing route crossing all the coastal villages, getting sights of beaches, backwaters, school kids etc. We also found a group of cyclist and bulleteers travelling in that route. On the way we found couple of Chinese fishing nets, which I had never seen before, but had heard a lot from Satish. Satish has a list of things for night photography workshop and Chinese fishing net was his dream. The fishing boats, coconut farms, fishing nets, fishermen started giving us Malabar feeling.

On the way to Fort Kochi

It was by around 9.30 AM, we reached Fort Kochi. Kochi has two parts of it. Ernakulam, the actual city, the other Fort Kochi. As we were already bored of the city life, we had decided to stay at Fort Kochi. As soon as we reached, we started hunting for tonight stay. Ohhhh . . . we had dropped the plan of celebrating New year at Mahe after checking out Fort Kochi. To quench our thirst we ended up having tender coconut and we met an Italian lady of about 60 yrs age. What amazed us was that she was travelling alone for more than a month and today was her last day in Kochi. She was very happy about her experience in India, except one incident where a "drunken bastard" try to get close to her in the beach side when she was alone enjoying the beauty of the sunset. Her advice for people was to have dressed up fully, so that there would be very less attention of people, and you wouldn't be inviting for any bad situations. She also helped us to understand the room rates in Fort Kochi. We thanked her for sharing her travel experience and headed towards the home stays.

The hunt ended up at "Tharavadu" home stay, located near to the princess street.This home stay was an old, authentic Kerala house modified to an home stay. The price were from INR 500 - 1500, which was also fitting in our budget. It was very artistic and we made up our mind not to miss this place. "No Rooms available" was the last thing we notice here at the end. The owner himself helped us to get another home stay just behind "Tharavadu", called Santa Cruze. It was pretty decent home stay costing INR 600/- per room. We got settled down here and Satish was in a hurry to get rid of all his last nights frustration and banged into the bath room to get fresh. He has completed his song and now its my turn to sing. More in the night.

Wow its a dream come true day for us. Satish had a dream of capturing the Chinese fishing net in the night and his dream has come true. He is busy now looking at those amazing shots we had clicked today.

After getting fresh, we decided to park our Shakila at the home stay and explore Fort Kochi by walk. It was a good decision, which we realized after few meters of walk. Most of the tourist coming here were walking around. I could feel a genie out of Satish's heart, happy for the crowd. After few direction calculation, we decided to hit Vypin Island as that would be ideal for the silhouette photography of Chinese fishing net. "What would you get in INR 3 now a days", I can proudly now say "We can reach Vypin Island in a ferry from Fort Kochi". And with an extra INR 4, you can take your 2 wheeler along with you. Wow !!!! amazing, isn't it. It was first experience for Satish to travel in ferry, though I had mine long back at Sagar, Karnataka to reach Sigandhur. Not wasting too much time in Vypin directly headed towards the Chinese Fishing nets to set our composition perfect. It was really a dream come true for us, a bigger one for Satish. After some nice clicks we headed back towards Fort Kochi beach area.

Experiment with Chinese Fishing Net at Vypin Island

There are two things Fort Kochi is famous for "Chinese Fishing Net" and "Kothuku (musquito)". Both of us would have fed around 300 ml of blood for those hungry "Kothuku". Very bad decision to roam in shorts in Fort Kochi. Make sure you dress up like a terrorist to avoid from these mosquitoes. Not to bother much about mosquitoes, our hunger to get the best shots of "Chinese Fishing Net" wasn't over. After few minutes of search we found a ramp heading towards the sea, giving us the right composition of a series of fishing nets. Finally we did find our place and it was all about playing with our camera triggers. We were very happy with the clicks at that place. There were many who approached us asking, if we were working for magazines. Not interested in any false credits, we told them we are hobby photographers. We headed towards Veli, where a Big banyan tree was decorated in lights. It was around 1.5 KMS of walk, and both of us enjoyed it. It was quick shots of the banyan tree and the Giant Wheel, which completed our photography experiments for today. There was a public DJ being played at Veli junction, organized by the New Year Celebration committee of Fort Kochi. We had walked for more than 10 KMs today which made us tired and we are trashing down.