4th Nov : Kumarakom

The big man must be thinkin we are nuts - yes we are, in a way....

The boat ride, exploring the back waters... Sunil, Sunny and the boat...
Pictures were taken at every possible instance...

The birds....





We did step outta the boat to explore the 'forest'

The best 'relaxing' day on the Leg 2 so far.. lyin on the hammock, listenin to music, with the lake just a few feet away....

4th Nov : Kumarakom

We are in God’s own country and what’s better than seeing the real Kerala in a small boat. GIR isn’t all about enjoying, but also about responsibilities and even if it demands sleeping for just four hours and getting up at 5:30 to leave by 6:15 and take the three-wheeler to the Kumarakom Bird Sanctuary, we do adhere to it, although today we ran late by half an hour. Stepping out of the room shocked us all, with the beauty of the lake and the horizon in front of us! As we had arrived late yesterday, we had no clue what so ever of the amazing view he had right in front of our room. We had a quick bite of toast and coffee and left for the Sanctuary and arrived there by 7am, just to be told that the boat had not arrived! As we were standing and waiting for the same, an old man approached us and made as an offer to show us around the back-waters in his boat. As we didn’t want to wait further, we said yes to him and walked towards his boat, which was quite a small one but enough for the 4 of us (Ashish didn’t come along.)
Places like Kumarakom do have a fantastic network of backwater channels and it was quite an experience for us to see all this first hand in the best possible manner. The old man rowed us out of the tiny channel, into quite a big one, where a lot of luxury boats were passing by. It was a first time for me like this in a boat and being early morning, we had less ‘traffic’ and could see people around starting their daily routine and bathing in the water. We also came across a gentleman taking bath in the channel water and clicked his pic, not knowing that we would be interacting with this person some couple of hours later in a restaurant and that he owned some classic bikes including Nortans!
We started seeing some interesting birds around and decided to go deep inside the sanctuary via the little channels and this was possible by going under a very low stone bridge which meant we had to almost lie down in the boat, but once inside it was as if we were in some Amazon rainforest! There was no one around, just dense vegetation, some water snacks and rare birds, sitting on the highest branches of trees. The boat man rowed the boat quite slowly and took us to the side of the channel to show us around in the forest on foot and actually helped us locate quite a few stunning birds! I, in the meantime explored the area around, looking for leeches, but to no avail! Sunny made full use of the Zoom lens and Sunil too made sure he captured each single birdie he could see. We continue our journey around the little rainforest type area before coming out to the main water channel where he took us out to the main water body connecting to the lake, on which our resort was based, but it was around 2 hours of rowing away!
We came across many a luxury boats, with facilities like A/C, TVs, waiters and what not. These don’t come cheap mind you, and will set you back by almost 20,000 per day in season! No doubt, places like Kerala are more expensive to visit than South-East Asian countries.
We payed the boat guy 350 bucks for a 2hour ride and decided to have breakfast at a KTDC’s snack place where only thing on serve was ‘Puri Bhaji’! anyways after four plates for the three of us, as we were about to leave, we came across a gentleman, who looked familiar and he kept his briefcase next to our table and walked off with an empty rum bottle! We got suspicious and I even asked the waiter to check on the briefcase if it had a bomb but the gentleman returned and started a conversation with us after seeing our GIR Tees. The guy turned out to be an ecologist, who lived in Munnar and was here on a project. And that empty rum bottle now had some muscle relaxation liquid! He was the same gentleman whom we had shot from the boat. He was also an avid biker, and owned some great classic machines like the Nortan and BSAs and back in Munnar has a place for staying the night for bikers dirt cheap! He also shared his own biking stories and how he toured from Munnar to Katmandu for his honeymoon and also had to work as a waiter in Bihar for a week when he ran out of money. Meeting such people really makes me wonder what special we are doing, what with a support vehicle and all these sponsors! Are we just wasting our time here? I mean, there are actual bikers out there who have toured India decades back, when the infrastructure was no where as good as it is today, and half the towns and cities didn’t even exist and may be highway robbers actually existed!
Leaving the place, I still had all these things going on in my mind. I know it would take a long time for me to come out of all this. We took a three-wheeler back to the resort and I immediately went in for the hammock, took the laptop and lied on it. I was like just a few feet from the lake, under the shade of the coconut tree, with luxury boats passing by and listening to the Ipod – the whole atmosphere was just too incredible and soothing to work and gradually I dozed off to sleep. Moments like these really make you feel that life on the GIR rocks for sure. Yes, we do slog our asses, work overtime, ride through the night, risking our lifes, sacrificing sleep for blogging and taking pictures but then we also make sure we cover up and treat us to pleasures of life like these. Thank you Sunny!
While I rested on the hammock, Sunil experimented with the RCV scale model and the lake, Sunny listened to the Ipod and relaxed on the other hammock and Ashish passed time on the laptop, or in the room, or just roaming around. As evening set in, the cloud cover came up and it started getting very dark. The breeze picked up, and it started raining! Awesome is the word for it. Kerala for sure was casting its spell on us and god was being too kind by doing all this to leisure starved GIR souls!
Evening was spent with two Kottyam members, both named Kiran (IDs Kiraxe, Kiran8502) and they took Ashish for some local delicacies. Tomorrow we ride to Kovalam, around 180kms away via NH-47. Our stay here at Kumarakom has been very refreshing and Kerala for sure is ‘God’s own country’