Vacation 2010 - The journey begins

Our vacation (Chennai-Kumarakom-Kottayam-Bangalore-Chennai) started on the evening of 30th April with a rush to catch the train from Chennai central. It was a working day (Friday) and like always plenty of emails and meetings before heading out on vacation (especially since I wasn't going to have any work access for almost 2 weeks). The first irritant started with the call-taxi cabbie demading Rs 150 for a drop from Gopalapuram to Chennai Central while these have always operated on meter. Anyways I didn't want to start off on a foul mood so paid him off and headed to our 2nd AC coach. The journey (starting at 7.45pm) was mostly good except we all thought that the Trivandrum mail was too jerky which kind of woke us up periodically in the night. I woke up at 5.30am when the train stopped at Thrissur stn and couldn't quite go to sleep after that. With the sun slowly rising the greenary along the way quite soothing. Not surprisingly our train was running late by an hour and we finally landed in Kottayam station at around 8.30am (instead of the published 7.15am). I had arranged for a pickup from our hotel (Abad whispering palms) who was waiting and thankfully had a carrier to accmodate our luggage. The climate seemed quite pleasant when we landed altough as the day progressed one could feel the sun. After a fairly picturous ride with glimpses of parts of the famous Vembanad lake along the way we reached our resort in about 45mins. One of the striking things about the short ride (& Kerala as we have come to believe in general) is the greenery around. So why would a group of people in the same nation keep their place green and so approachable that it can become touristy?! Beats me. Something I need to understand more as I start this trip. Along the way we can see plenty of signs stating the famous 'gods own place' and if there was any such place on the plains of India then surely Kerala has to be one of them when it come to nature.