Kerala bits

It is Monday. I am supposed to be working.

But here I am, ignoring work and looking at my chutti ko photos. I should remind myself - Kerala trip is over. The past six months of anticipation is over. Get that in your head and get back to work!!!

Before I pack up feelings from this trip, I wanted to recall a few of the most interesting bits of the trip.

• I would like to start with this cute Tamil aunty who spoke to us the entire way in Tamil. We were totally engaged with her, too, and would answer in Hindi and gestures. None of us actually knew what she was saying and I don't think she understood us, either. The twist in the tale was she thought we understood Tamil but didn't know how to speak the language. One kind co-passenger enlightened us and we were all twaaaaaaa.
• This list wouldn't be complete without this story. A dead creature that washed up on the shore of the Arabian Sea in Poovar Beach. It totally grossed out my friends but I was intrigued. It was white and flabby. It was kinda big. The lower half of its body was eaten up. Its skin was bleached out white. It seemed to have ears and legs but since it was turned the other way when it washed up I couldn't really tell for sure. The beach where it washed up was cordoned off to us and I dared not cross over to have a proper look at it. My phone was dead so I couldn't take a picture and my friends remained grossed out till the end😁. I wonder who ate it. Sharks? What was it? These and other questions.😣
• Kerala auto and bus drivers love driving at top speed. They even take on the curves of uphill roads at high speed in big buses. You actually need to hold on to the seat before you to minimize the jolts.
  
• Their buses have this weird rubber wala 'shutter' windows. I was telling my friends that it is all or nothing when it comes to windows in Kerala buses. You either open the shutter and have the wind blow your hair and cheek fats everywhere (thanks to their speed level) or you pull the shutter down and remain in darkness and breathe in stale air. 
  
  
  
• The thing they call 'waterfall'. Hahaha. The waterfalls we saw weren't anything to be excited about at all. They were just a handful of 'piddly water flowing from an unimpressive height' kinda waterfalls. They should be everyday things, not marked in the tour package as touristy gems. I wonder why they did that.
• Biryani- It was everywhere in Kerala and it surprised me no end. I had assumed biryani was limited to the north of India (though I know Hyderabad biryani is popular across South Asia and Hyderabad is in Telangana which is in South India). DUH! Anyway we just gorged on the different varieties of biryanis that we came across. There was the egg biryani and the chicken biryani in the train. Then we had prawn biryani, Thalassery chicken biryani, and chewing gum chicken biryani. I'm only half kidding about the last one. It literally smelled like chewing gum.

  

  prawn biryani on the right flanked by a plate of yummy fried squid.