One of the most beautiful places I have seen is a paradise called Munnar. So, when some of my friends suggested that we go for a trip to the place, I was more than happy to YES. I had been there just once before but I had already fallen in love with it, at first sight.

Seven of us crammed into a Toyota Qualis on a Saturday night (Jan 7) and set off. We took the more scenic routes, all those extra miles where worth every bit. It was a surreal experience travelling through the winding mountain roads cutting through the thick fog that surrounded us. You couldn’t see anything five feet beyond! As we reached higher though, we were a bit worried about the fog, since it could blur out all that beautiful scenery. But god was kind to us and the fog cleared at the right time. We parked near a tea-plantation on the way and had a lot of fun walking amidst the tea plants down the steep slopes. The greenery around us was truly breathtaking. Only now can I understand why Kerala is in fact “God’s own Country”!

We didn’t stay for long at Munnar town and headed to Rajamalai a part of the Eravikulam National Park. It was a short light trek up the mountains. Unlike my last visit, this time we were able to see the famous Nilgiri Thars… an endangered animal. Nothing special about them though, just wild goats! But again the view from the top was sensational. It also provided us with plenty of photo opportunities, and being the way we are, never missed one of them :) Oh, that old rusty shack, which inspired the title of this site during my last visit, still stood there.. neglected but brave! :D

Our next stop was an unlikely tourist centre called Marayoor. It is famous for its sandalwood forests and notorious for its sandalwood smugglers. There we were lucky to enjoy the hospitality of two locals – Babuji and “Comrade” Johnson. One of them was the local committee secretary of the Communist Party and the other was an ardent Congress party worker. You can guess the fun we had listening to their never ending amusing arguments about Kerala politics! They had a small place at the edge of the forest where they helped us to cook some food for ourselves. Our stomachs’ full, we set off to Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary.

The road is such that it cuts 40kms through the forest. I was wondering what would have happened had our vehicle broken down somewhere there! Hmm. The forest has a huge population of Elephants and Tigers, but unfortunately we had to be satisfied with seeing a few peacocks, a lot of monkeys and two or three deers. We also encountered a crocodile reserve on the way and we succeded in gettting into trouble taking a few photographs there, when it was stated quite clearly that photography was disallowed! Anyway “somehow” we managed to pull out from that mess and headed straight to Pollachi and our way back home.

The trip back was mostly filled with gossip and prank calls to friends who couldn’t make it ;) But one thing of note were the huge windmills by the side of the highway. Made for some nice picture postcards! Tuesday early morning after a brief stop over at Ranjith’s home in Alappuzha we were back in good old Trivandrum and then were those loooong zzzzs.

For the complete photo gallery, simply click here :).

How to get there?
From Trivandrum: The best route is to take the MC road to Ayur, then to Pathanamthitta, Pirmed, Thekkadi, Kallar, Devikolam and finally to Munnar. This seems to be the best option to me. Our return leg was from Marayoor to Udumalpettai, then Pollachi, Nenmara, Thrissur and then back to Trivandrum via NH 47. That was a (very) long route, but the drive through the forests was really exciting!
From Kochi: NH 49 via Muvattupuzha, but then you will miss the beauty of the Devikolam-Munnar road. One solution is to go to Devikolam just for the pleasure after reaching Munnar. But if you don’t want that, you can go to Thodupuzha from Muvattupuzha, then to Iddukki, Devikolam and Munnar. That route would cost you atleast 50km additional though.
From the North: From Bangalore via NH 209 to Coimbatore, Pollachi, Udumalaipetta, Chinnar, Marayoor and then to Munnar. Since you are coming down all this way you can also go to Thekkady via Devikolam and you wont miss the sight of all the tea-plantations :)
From outside India: Take a flight to Trivandrum or Kochi. Then as above. :D

Read the Intro first :)

It was sometime in July last year. So this one day we had a shortened college day for some reason. Someone suggested we go somewhere. Subhash I think, came up with the idea of a very little known beach called Aazhimala. Our first of those several “dynamic” plans began there. 6 of us squeezed ourselves in my car and 4 more followed in two mobikes.

Driving around narrow but uncrowded roads, we reached this big turn on the road. Subash, who was the only one who had visited this place earlier, was constantly telling us that we’ll all gasp in awe at the sight we’ll see… and boy he didn’t exaggerate a wee bit. The sea seemed to sneak right in front of our eyes with all its grandeur all of a sudden. It was an experience I cannot describe. One second we were looking at dull gray asphalt and at the next the gorgeuos blue sea.

Being a “road less taken” has its disadvantages too. There was no real fixed path to reach the sandy beach down, from the cliff where the road ended. But yeah, we did find one in the end and that was part of the fun too. Coming down to the beach made it look even more amazing. We were all enjoying the serene beauty of the whole scene, when suddenly disaster struck. I in my over enthusiasm to get into the water, misjudged the laws of physics, slipped on a rock and crashed my elbow on it. It was paining like hell, but to put a brave face in front of the others I kept saying it was alright (In reality a bone was almost broken and couldn’t move my hand properly for almost a week ;) ). That did dampen the spirits for a minute but soon we began a game of volleyball cum football cum basketball. I tried my best to join them but my hurt arm kept saying no. After a while, we sat on the many huge rock jutting in to the sea and kept chitchatting. Sitting there was another awesome experience too. I know I have been repeating these superlatives so many times, but trust me this place deserves it. The only thing we did wrong during this trip was not taking a camera. Hmm. that was a basic mistake, but luckily something we never made in our future endeavours.

All done, we climbed back up to where the car was. Then came a local guy, talked a bit rough to us saying that this place was a bit dangerous and blah blah blah. Yeah, he is probably right you need to be a bit careful coming here, but hey.. what is life without taking some risks?

How to get there? So if you are impressed and want to visit this place, well here is how. Aazhimala is located around 30-40 minutes drive from Trivandrum city. Take the National Highway 47 towards Kanyakumari and take a right at Balaramapuram. Travel down the Vizhinjam road and ask some locals for precise directions. There are a few turns you will have to make, but its not that difficult to find. If you wish to travel via bus, then last time I checked there was a city bus from the East Fort stand going to Aazhimala Temple, which is only around a 100m away from this site. I am not very sure about the timing, frequency and crowd-factor of this bus though.

Highly recommended trip. But before you get down the cliff, it is always good to seek the advice of some local. Just to be on the safe side. :)

My semester exams are going on now and I have been (supposedly) spending most of my time studying for it. Not really studying, its more like mugging up. That makes me wonder how good an evaluation system our B.Tech examinations are.

From what I know, an engineer must be someone who applies his knowledge to engineer some ingenious things. Does that mean he needs to remember every theory in the world word-by-word? Hmm. Our University of Kerala seems to think so, unfortunately. The whole model and structure of their examinations makes us not want to apply anything anywhere!

We had this subject called “Information system for managers” this year. It was a rather interesting paper, but somehow the univ guys have managed to spoil it. You ask anyone in my class what the paper was about and I’m sure not one of us would know anything more than you do :D . The question papers seem to be testing our memory and not whether we have actually understood what the good old proffessors had written in those textbooks. I thinks its time that the whole written exam thing is scrapped, atleast modified. I mean wouldn’t it be better if an engineer is evaluated on how many useful things that he can do rather than test how many bytes of information he has stored in his brain. I know its not something that will change overnight. But surely its doable.

Then you might ask me.. How to make that change? Hmm.. I’m just a poor engineer from the University of Kerala. How would I know! ;)