Just before I start, once again, a very happy, prosperous, healthy and successful new year to everyone reading this blog! Just at the end of last year...ummm...that makes it sound long long ago, huh?[rephrase]-just a few days ago, I returned from my small holiday to kerala, one of the southernmost states in India(on the western coast). Kerala, is popularly known by its slogan, GOD'S OWN COUNTRY.And after my few days there, I have no reason[read NONE whatsoever], to argue with that slogan. It's one of the most beautiful places I have been for a long long time.I mean, I'm not trying to compare it to Switzerland myself, but most people tend to call it the Switzerland of India. The state is the epitome of Biodiversity, atleast of all places I've seen in my small life.There is such a rich and wide and diverse flora oozing from the place, which, being in a tropical place quite near to the equator, is vastly and enormously difference from the Himalayn mountains and the Himalyan flora, the latter being the more visited place by me.Therefore it was a very unique and a different experience from our usual holidays. Now, Kerala is the most literate and educated state in India.Hold your breath if you don't know this fact, because it may come as a massive jolt to some: it has a literacy rate of 99.9%[read completely educated people].Ofcourse, the people are very different from the North Indians too, and not just due to their complexion.They have a completely different way of life, part of which can also be credited to it being a coastal area.The people are tremendously knowledgable, and highly intelligent, and yet lead a very simple and a modest lifestyle. Most engage themselves in very simple country life, and others range in many things. So after a Delhi-Mumbai-Cochin[read Kochi] flight, we landed at Kochi International Airport in Kerala on the 26th of December.From there we directly took a 4.5-5 hour journey to Munnar, a very famnous hill station in Kerala. Munnar, is a composition of two malayalam(language of kerala) words- "Munn" meaning "three" and "ar" meaning "river".So, as the name evidently suggests, it is a "land of three rivers". Munnar is one of the most popular hill stations in Southern India, and is vastly covered with gazillions of acres of tea plantaions.We stayed for the remenant of that and the whole of the next day at Munnar, and left from there on the morning of the 28th to Kumarakom, slightly north of Kottayam.This was a drastic and a sudden turn around, going from a hill station to the backwaters of the sea[read backwaters-cum-lake, w/o beach]. The journey, both initially, from Kochi to Munnar and back from Munnar to Kumarakom, was astoundingly beautiful, with a smooth gradient of everchanging and a massively diverse variety of flora. There is hardly a thing which does not grow in Kerela, from all sorts of spices[cardamom, black pepper, javitri, Cinnamon, etc. etc.}, to exotic plants like Vanilla, to Coffee and ofcourse all sorts of Palms.Rice.Pineapples and Couconuts.And not to mention fourteen different varieties of Bananas itself.It ranges on and on, and in short, it would be quite apt to say that "on almost every inch of the non-constructed land, something or the other of great significance grows". So from Munnar, we came to Kumarakom, which is situated near a Lake Vembanand.Now this lake has a very unique and a special property(due to it being connected with the sea too): half of the year it is a fresh water lake[fed in by the rivers from the mountains], and the remaining half of the year, it is the backwaters of the sea.It works in something like this:when the rivers bring down their voume (during the monsoon season specially), it is a fresh-water lake.But the remaining part of the year, when the rivers do not contribute much to the proportions, the saline water from the sea enters the lake, and it becomes the backwaters of the sea! So we reached Kumarakom on the evening of 28th(which was again a long car ride), and stayed there for the remenant of that and thw hole of the next day too. As I've already mentioned, it was an interesting sudden transformation from the Mountains to the Sea, but it was completely worth it.Kumarakom is a really beautiful place too, and that lake is simply fantabulously beautiful and magnificent. And that was basically that, as we departed from Kumarakom on 30th morning, back to the Kochi Airport, back to Indian Airlines IC-166 to Delhi via Mumbai, and back home, just in time to welome 2006! Ofcourse, in this span some 384 odd photos were taken, most of which have been uploaded OVER HERE FOLLOW LINK. Here's a small sneek-peak too:
P.S.:This is just a sneek-peak.For all the photos and FULL SIZES, click on the link above!

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An interesting event that happenned, which is worth a seperate mention[such as this], is while going by the Delhi-Mumbai-Kocji flight, I fell in love with an air hostess.She was [and remains] the most beautiful woman that I've ever seen in my life.There was just something about her that I've not been able to forget about her even till now, even while I know very well that the probability of ever seeing her again is maybe less than 1 in a million! Sad, isn't it? But anyway, once again, a Happy New Year to all!