Getaway..

Have been off to nearby town called Kasaragod this gone Sunday. It's situated geographically in the northern most part of the state of Kerala in India. Kerala happens to be blessed with mother natures gift of greenery. Backwaters, ayurveda, temples, kalari(a form of martial art), Kathakali(a dance form), beaches, fish delicacies etc are some of the pictures that comes to my mind when someone utters the word Kerala. '"God's own country" is the phrase that the tourism board of kerala has come up with! True i believe when, i see it in the perspective associating it with the words that i mentioned is attached with Kerala. Kasaragod is my native and have lived there as a kid. My parent still stay there and i visit them once in a while. The last sunday that has gone by was a day that i would remember in the days to come as it was something more than a regular visit to my hometown. I had some of my friends and colleagues with me from Udupi to visit an island situated in Kasaragod.
The place we planned to visit is called 'Thurthi island' in Chandragiri, Kasaragod. It lies on the river Payassuini jus a kilometer(approx) upstream from the place where it joins the Arabian sea. The land is privately owned by it's only occupants. A permission from the owner is required to travel to this place. It's quite easy to get there once you inform the owner of the place. He arranged a boat of his and a oarsman to take us safely to his island. A small hand made boat which could easily be occupied by 10 persons! :) The oarsman was a quite person with solid build. A look at the oar he was using was enough for me to judge why he looked strong. God, it was heavy and using this required some strength. he island is something that has been formed by silt deposited by the river from time to time. So the natural process of the island growth is on ongoing process even to this day at the cost of the riversides being eroded.
However, once we landed on the island all we could see was the plantation of arecanut and coconut trees. And we had in for a surprise when someone mentioned about the toddy!(toddy is a drink that is extracted from either coconut or palm trees and is intoxicating if drunk in considerable large amount). Some of my friends gave it a try and i gave the idea a skip as soon as i smelled it. Yucks man. It smells very bad. I know there are a lot of lovers for this drink. But then it didn't go with me. :) After all this we had a round of taking some dip in the river. The water was a bit of salty as the sea water must have managed to creep upstream as the water levels in summer is low in river. But i know this river in rainy season can be very dangerously flowing at a very high level and undercurrent at alarming rate which would put the person venturing into water at risk of loosing his life. I think basically the rainy season would leave the island highly inaccessible.
After the swim in the river we took some rest in the room that we rented out here. Pretty descent. They've total 3 cottages with 4 beds each that could be used for stay overnight. The roofing was the old fashioned mud tiles and as wooden false ceiling. This shielded the extremely hot weather from getting into the dwelling. This is something that is really missing in the houses that are built today.. :( Lunch was some packed fast food that we had gotten along on our way to the island. But some people got a treat of kerala chicken from the city as the oarsman was ready to get them food on demand. I think they had a nice time eating the long dead chicken. I pity the chicken! The sole purpose of its existence was to satisfy the human greed of satisfying the taste bud! hmm..
A visit to the Bekal fort was something that we thought we would not be able to include in our trip list before we had started for the day. But i think we all were of the opinion that we go to this old monument and then return back. So there we went in the hot blazing sun to visit the fort built by 'Ikkeri nayaks'. The famed Tippu Sulthan is said to have eventually taken over this fort only to be then passed to British east India company after his rule. The geographic location of this place is such that a lot of area can be seen from this point. Even the land and the sea. So it served as a major defense point for couple of centuries. Now this fort has no significance other than history. A few movies have been shot here. Other than that it has some tourist attraction. The fort has been restored by Archeological survey of india now. Some of the fort had been damaged and it has been put back now to restore back the majesty of the place. The view atop this fort is soothing with breeze constantly blowing from the sea.
We started our backward journey in our 5 motorbikes and a car with the sun setting and reached Udupi at about 9. So a day seeing places around in good company was worthily spent.