Kerala - named 'God's own country'

I took so many photo’s and have had to delete so many.
We were greeted at the station by a loving mother, Suzi Kannady, who then took us to her house and straight away she and her daughters were cooking French Toast. What a lovely welcome.
They were amazing. 2 of her daughters are living at home with their 2 sons, Sonia with Austin, and Sofia with Alfie, and they were just delightful people. A beautiful family.
Both of the girls were teachers and Sonia had a massive deadline to meet before Monday so she spent all her time at the dining room table valuing English papers, and asked us to join her. It was difficult work as the power was quite frequently off and we were working under dim lights… I’m hoping she made the deadline!
We were properly spoiled, they did use much curry in their food at all, every day we had French Toast, and boost drinks, and one day Suzi made us a cake. It was lovely to go there and spend time with Christadelphians who had been in the truth many years.
We arrived on a Friday and left on Monday morning to bus an hour further south to stay with another couple in the town of Angamuli, George and Annie.
Our stay with them was brief as we’d been told it was a lovely place to get out and be a tourist, so our only day we rose early and caught a bus down to Kochin.

Having read lonely planet, we eventually found a boat that would take us for a 3 hour ride through the backwaters and drop us off on an island to explore.
It was gorgeous. Peaceful. Beautiful. Restful. The blessings were poured out, and we mummured back our thankfulness.

As always on our Indian excursions, there is so much to do that lunch is left out, much to the dissapointment of any Indians traveling with us. There just wasn’t a suitable time or place! We did snack though!
We sauntered through the Dutch palace, which wasn’t really anything, proven by the 2rupee cost at the door and then made our way to the Jewish Synagogue was built in the 17th C.
Interesting, but still buildings… then we caught a cattle class boat across the river, for another 2 rupee’s each, not having seen the passenger boat.
We found a beach, named it ours, and waited for the sun to set over the Arabian Sea. Sure it was a sunset, but any water sunset in India is very precious, and this was truly special. Our God is an awesome God.

All too soon we were on a bus back and I think it was my freakiest (not fastest) bus ride in India thus far… Keralan drivers are atrocious. Two buses are always racing along the roads together and overtake at alarming rates. Poor Annie, after that she was like, can we catch a train for our next tripJ

We had a bit of a scrambled morning the next day as they had told us that the train stopped at their station, and then woke us at 8 saying we had to be left by half an hour to catch a bus to another station. We arrived the minute the train was meant to leave. Thankfully it was running late, and we had time to make our way up and over and to the right bogey number before it came racing by.

Tim had originally said that we would be traveling overnight, but it was booked for 12 hours during the day, and I’ll ever be grateful for that change. The scenery was spectacular the whole way along, and the sun setting between mountains and a river made for some very gorgeous shots. It was the my first train trip that I was awake for traveling through mountains and it was right near Dharmapuri that the man on the window realised that he wasn’t appreciating the view as much as his fellow passengers trying to see past him and gave up his seat which for us. We accepted gratefully. I could live on a train traveling in circles round and round that mountainous area. I’m not sure that I’d find a circular track though.