THE PERFECT MIXTURE OF ART, SCIENCE AND MAGIC
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New Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport (DEL) to Cochin (COK), Kerala, India on Air India
Heleventia - June 22, 2017
Theme Music: Baby by Warpaint
You and I
Prologue
Hello! First of all I would like to extend my warmest gratitude to all those taking time to read my first trip report. I chanced upon this site while I was looking for the seat map on Seat Guru for a flight to Bangkok I took last year, and I was much delighted to discover such a vibrant community sharing interests of traveling and flying. Ever since then I have been completely hooked onto this amazing place and I have taken great joy in reading so many wonderful trip and interesting trips reports posted here on an almost daily basis. Thereafter I had always wanted to post a trip report of my own but life happened. Now that I have some time I have decided, for the purpose of documentation (and if anyone cares to read this silly write up its an added benefit), to post a report on a holiday I had taken in June to the Southern Indian state of Kerala.
Indian summers, especially inland routinely see temperatures touching 45 C; and in places like Delhi, given the urban structure and the phenomenon of heat islands, not to mention the rising temperatures with each succeeding year breaking the record of the previous one, the effect is compounded multifold.
My favorite season, on the contrary has been the rains - especially the kind of murky, dark ones, falling whenever the air has a chill, of the kind that makes you want to spend the entire day in front of a warm fireplace with a nice, hot cup of cocoa. However, such days are a rarity in the subcontinent and I have to make do with the monsoon rains.
In Delhi, monsoon is never ‘soon’. After the SouthWest winds have covered most of the subcontinent only do the brokered winds already having shed most of their moisture reach this place. Consequently, rainfall in Delhi is comparably less than the Southern and the Eastern (parts of which receive some of the highest rainfall in the world) parts of the country.
Goa seems to be a monsoon destination and so does Meghalaya but I have already visited either of these places. I ultimately decide to visit Kerala starting from Cochin, onwards to Alappuzha, thence to Trivandrum and finally to Kanyakumari for a period of 5 days as allowed by my finances and time. A three day journey by trains rules that option out (though trains are my first love) and a quick glance over the flights indicate Air India with a layover in Mumbai as the best option (in terms of money). Moreover, I wanted to see the new terminal in Mumbai, so my planned itinerary is thus:
AI 863 DEL - BOM 1:12pm dep. 3:10pm arr.
AI 681 BOM - COK 5:15pm dep. 7:15pm arr.
Initial Planned Route;Courtesy GC Mapper
Tickets are booked for a little over Rs. 9,000 return (return flight was non stop from Trivandrum) and all that is left for now is to wait for the holidays in June.
This is my first trip report and one of the first journeys that I have taken solo; therefore please forgive any mistakes and please do not hesitate to engage in criticism of this attempt (I have a number of reports I’d to write in the future - the past year has taken me to Bangkok, Shillong, and Diu and I’d like to cover them in a not so distant future).
A note on Theme Music
For this report, I'm choosing a song that represents the overall theme and moods which persist throughout the journey. Baby by Warpaint reflects the rainy mood and the sentiments in my mind which prevail through this trip.
Another song that I wish to chose, is not a song per se but a jingle that was composed for advertisement by Hutch, a telecom company, now acquired by Vodafone You and I. Though this jingle was for a commercial purpose , it evokes strong nostalgia and some of the places I've visited are similar to those featured in the advertisement, so I think this is yet another apt music for this trip.