It's been more than a month since my visit to Kovalam, but even today I can rewind and relive all that we did in my mind. It was that good.
This, I assume is because S liked the place and enjoyed every moment of it.To start off, we had a nice flight to Trivandrum via Bangalore and both the flights from Hyderabad to Bangalore and from there on to Trivandrum were on time. It helps a lot, if you aren’t wasting any time especially when on holiday for flight delays.
Once we reached Trivandrum airport, the chauffeur from Leela was there. No, he wasn’t ready with a placard or something but somehow he identified us straight off and came to me and asked for my name. I still wonder how he did that?! So there we were in our drive, a Nissan and he greeted us with fresh wet towels to freshen up. Hmm good life I thought, whilst S liked it a lot.
We were invited by courteous staff at the Leela (I must admit there’s something about Kerala girls!!) with antique garlands, teeka and all. Immediately after freshening up, we had a club sandwich (it was filled with ham, regretted it and left it all alone on its own apart from the first bite) and hit the beach. There was a nice private beach very similar to the The Park, Vizag. But this was more secluded, cozy. The sea was wild that day with high tides and the security guy over there was fed up of asking us not to delve too much into the sea. Went back to the room, had a relaxing hot tub bath for good 2 hours and went for dinner at the beach side resto. The beer was chilled, the prawns were too delicious and overall that ended up being the best dinner on our trip.
On the next day we went to see what else but backwaters, which by now is as synonymous with Kerala as Sachin is to Cricket in India. We had a private small ferry boat with a (friendly English speaking) boatman who showed us around for good 3-4 hours. Also visited the place where the backwaters and the sea meet with a small island kind of land thrown in. Great place to be. I went crazy clicking pictures of S, the scenery and what not. Came back at around lunch time and that being Sunday we binged upon nice lazy sumptuous Sunday brunch until late afternoon. It was THE best lunch I had since long time. 10 minutes into our lunch, we saw a huge beautiful peacock flying around, making merry on The Club building. Soon it was joined by its mate, another beautiful peacock. S went crazy and tried and succeeded in clicking a couple of good snaps. That was the first time I saw peacocks apart from, in zoo. Late into the evening, S had an appointment in the spa there (This was one of the main reasons she again said yes for a beach holiday I suppose). While she was at, I had fun all alone guzzling a couple of chilled beers with a view to die for at their bar, aptly named The Bar. Since we ate a lot in the afternoon we settled for light meal in the room (or was it a Cottage?) for that night.
The next day was all for us to chill around. Just relaxing, looking around the property (it’s a huge cliff property) clicking photos, cuddling and having fun. It took us whole day to cover the property though. We also played a game of badminton in their court. Of course, S won. But she cheated me out in the middle of the next game when I was on vengeance to level it out. We had lunch, played some TT, moved around and used the BUGGY way to the fullest. In the evening we settled for the buffet dinner. It was a nice calm cozy dinner. The food was strictly okay.
The next day was a toss between a nearby hill station and Kanyakumari. I opted for Kanyakumari since S insisted that we might never come so long just to visit it. Hence deciding on Kanyakumari, we started the day with a great buffet breakfast, probably one of the extensive spreads I ever saw. In fact all the four nights we were there, we started all our days with their buffet breakfast. It took us good 3 hours to reach there, and the drive was exciting with countless coconut trees, people all around, living everywhere right through the border. In Kerala they don’t believe in highways / countryside I believe. On our way there we went to some Padmanabhapuram Palace which was funny at its best. Kanyakumari was strictly okay. I felt that we could have used the day in a better way, but S was content with some temple we visited on our way back. And as usual, she did shop for some silly antique stuff.
The next day was the day when we were about to return. Just before leaving the Leela, we went for the beach one last time, and 5 minutes into it, I see S getting all excited whilst playing in the beach and gazing at me, for one of her Crocs got washed away by a huge tide. Luckily for us there was a security guy who got it back for her. After that she cooled off, we had a nice refreshing drink and I left a healthy tip for the guy there. Then we reached the airport and the flight to Bangalore was on time. Once we reached Bangalore, I was somehow feeling it’s not done yet. That’s when they announced that the onward flight to Hydebrabad was delayed by a good couple of hours. I knew there was nothing to loose as our holiday was over and thanks to the new airports that have come up in Bangalore and Hyderabad, you always have something to indluge yourself in, in these delays. In a way, this delay was like an extension to our holiday. So I looked around and settled for freshly brewed, neatly packaged KF tin beers and some hot mirchi. That was the fitting end to the “good times” that we had, had.
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