On the Roads..

Well, today is day of bus rides, more bus rides and only bus rides!

We had Aapams, Egg Curry, Christmas cakes and home-grown bananas at my friend’s place for breakfast. As most of you guessed it right, we were heading towards Alappuzha (Alleppey). 

We got an A/C Volvo from Vytilla to Allepey, a journey of 2 hours. Once there, we took another bus to Champakulam, which was a good 40 minutes through the picturesque backwaters and lush greens of Alappuzha. This is not called God’s Own Country for no reason. It is simply beautiful. 

All we wanted to see was the Church that was featured in Vinnaithandi Varuvaya movie. Well, frankly I had no clue how the Church was or where was it. I’m pathetic at remembering scenes and locations from movie. But V, on the other hand, would remember them to the T. It was he, who kept insisting we visit this one. 

So, the over excited kid V, while trying to navigate to St. Mary’s Forange Church, Pullinkunnu, ended up navigating to St. Mary’s Basicilia and which is why we landed at Champamkulam. We realised the mistake only after reaching Champamkulam and seeing the St. Mary’s Basicilia Church. The guy was like, dei, indha Church andha movie la vandhadhu madiri illaye da! 

Then we figured out that Pullinkunnu was another 13 km away from Champamkulam. Thankfully, we hadn’t gone in a completely wrong direction altogether. We took a bus from Champamkulam to Mankombu. And then, a ferry to the other side of the bank. And lastly, an auto to the Church. 

We reached the Church at 12.15 P.M. and to our dismay, the Church was closed. We had to return back again. 

Back to Alappuzha, we had lunch at a restaurant near the bus stand and began waiting for a bus to Trivandrum. 

Trivandrum was a 5-hour journey from Alleppey. We got an A/C Volvo at 2.00 P.M., but the seats were all full. Considering that waiting at the bus stand was futile, as we didn’t know when would the next bus be, we decided to board the bus. 

Traffic was at full peak and it took more than an hour to leave Alleppey and standing wasn’t making it any better. We finally got seats after a couple of hours. The bus ride was really slow and we reached only at Trivandram at 7.30 P.M. 

Once there, we had to go to his cousin’s place which is in the outskirts of the city. Required quite a bit of haggling with the auto drivers to agree to the price for the drop. 

After about 20 minutes, we reached our destination. The house is in a multi floor apartment complex just behind the beach with a lot of recreation available. It was a different kind of experience for me, who has never been into such a place before. 

The night was spent talking about trips, work and walking around in the lawns and parks within the complex.

All in all, today was all about bus rides across the state and some hearty conversations at night.

A small snippet of our travel for the day till the Pullinkunnu Church. Post this, we came back to Alleppey and took a bus to Trivandrum which was further down!