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| Feeling fresh after getting up next day in the morning |
We had planned to do the the early morning 3 AM DARSHANS at the main temple, but none of us woke up until 10 am next day and so we started blaming each other for the time lost.
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| wrapped in bedsheets, Mr World, Mr Universe, Mr Asia Pacific (from L to R) |
- for Bisen's fisherman look, Dhoti & hair stylist : Rohan.
Elephant Fort
The queue to the Darshan was longest I had seen so far in any temple (next nly to Tirupati) but the darshans were worth all the trouble. Next we went to Anakkota (meaning "Elephant Fort"). About 66 elephants belonging to the temple of Guruvayur are kept here. It was nice and frightening at the same time to see so many elephants at the same place doing there daily chores.
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| At Anakkota (elephant's fort) |
Shock of the TRIP (SOT)
After lunch we decided to leave the place but the Lodge owner warned us about the All India Bandh(strike) being observed the next day ie. July 5th. He also said Kerala is extremely troublesome on a bandh(strike) day, especially from a tourist point of view - no food, no place to stay, nothing to visit as everything remains clsoed. So he advised us to leave Kerala before next day's sunrise. The situation seemed to be extremely filmy. But we had no mood of leaving Kerala and forgo our plans to travel across the state.
So after consulting our map and some people, we modified our original plan of reaching Chalakudy(where the film Raavan was being shot) and decided to somehow try and reach Munnar(being on a hill station, doing trekking on a Hartaal(strike) day was more sensible than being on plains and sitting idle. When I think back, I feel it was one of the best decisions I took despite so many odds and confusion). But implementing our decision to reach Munnar was far more challenging.
Challenges ahead
1.There weren't any direct bus nor any direct route from guruvayur to Munnar
2.Language was a big problem, and it was hard to find people to discuss how to reach Munnar
3.Time was running out of hand, the bandh(strike) period would start 6 AM next morning and we had to reach our destination before that.
4.Owing to our budget constraints, we were primarily dependent on public transport and due to Hartal/All India close, even public transport was being cancelled.
5.We couldn't have hired a cab for the 4 of us. It was against our principle of non-luxury, budget travelling.
6.Our primary source of analysis was the map I was carrying. But the routes shown in it were not entirely true. Infact, they were somewhat misguiding.
7. And even the few buses that were running were not on time, thereby delaying us.
Twists and turns
Finally we took the following route Guruvayur -> Thrissur -> Kalady (birth place of Adi Shankaracharya) -> Perumbavoor(in Kochin district) -> Kothamangalam. We changed 3 bus and finally at 11 PM we reached a deserted town called Kothamangalam where we waited for the 3 AM bus to Munnar and there was no guarantee if it would be indeed coming. The bus stand had an eerie feel to it mainly because everything was closed in anticipation of the next day's Bandh.
Police ka Chakkar
In between police van would keep coming back to us. They kept wondering why strange fellows (from North India) in shorts were sitting like this(in an unknown insignificant place like Kothamangalam) at the dead of night on bus stand (particularly when even the public transport was closed). Eventually we befriended few of them who knew English and they assured us that the Bus for Munnar would indeed come. We passed our time by sitting idle, irritating each other and stuffed our bags with the few things available on the roadside like Toast bread, etc for the next day.
At around 3:15 AM the suspense was released when an empty bus heading towards Munnar came. We climbed in it and spread ourselves on the empty benches and dozed off.
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