A Weekend Trip...

Chitra calls me on Friday and says, lets go for a tour this Sunday to Athirapally-Vazhachal. I said OK. Who all will come was not finalized. When I called her on Saturday, things were not yet clear. And finally by 10 PM things where finalized. Anu I, Anu II, Cibi, Chitra, Merin, Resmi, Krishnan, Libish, Maneesh, Rishin, Rohan & Myself were there. Going by a Tempo traveler, leaving Ernakulam by 8 and will return by 6. That was the plan.

Libish called me in the morning and said will pick me. We were to board the Van from Edapally toll junction by 8:15. As we no timeline was not to be followed, we didn’t follow that. Anyway I couldn’t talk my breakfast. We reached Toll junction by 9:00. Maneesh was waiting there from 8:15. Van reached after 2-3 mins. We left and picked Rohan from kalamaserry who was waiting there from 8:15. From Company Padi we picked Resmi, Merin n Cibi. Cibi had reached there by 7:45. After lot of waiting we set towards Athirapalli.

After taking some wrong turns and all we reached Athirapally by 10:30. Took tickets and entered the gate. Seeing the up-hill climb, Maneesh and Rishin was little reluctant to come. And when we started to ascend the would take rest at every point. And finally we reached Athirapally falls. We took some photos. The guard called us showed us two elephants at the bottom of the falls. It seemed like to black/brown dots.

Initially I was not interested in taking dip in the river but decided to get in later. We climbed up the river and found a good place at the center of the river. Except Cibi all others came. The deepest point was up to hip of mine. While we were having blast, we heard a scream from the forest side of the river. Not many heard that. It was of some wild animal, but couldn’t see any. After sometime we saw some movements at the bank and there appeared two elephants. Fully soaked in dirt they were to Female elephants, large in size with long tails and trunks that touched earth.

We were the nearest people. Some were afraid and wanted to go back. But we decided to stay. The elephants came, drank water and went. What an astonishing sight it was. We were so close to the wild elephants. To our disappointment, we didn’t had any camera with us at that time. Damn.

After having some more blast we came out from the river, dressed up. We went to the bottom of the falls. A brilliant sight. Water scorching from the top. Water drops all over the place as if it was covered with mist.





We climbed back. All were exhausted by then. So decided to leave without going to Vazhacal and to have lunch from chalakudi. It was 3:30 when we had our lunch. We still had time and as we all had food, we were feeling little energetic and decided to go to Cehari beach. After a lot of wrong turns we finally reached the beach. All these time we were having blast inside the vehicle. Teasing both Anu, Resmi and Chitra.

We made a sand castle at Cherai beach. Some foreigners who came by liked the castle and took some pictures. A lady asked, who made the castle to Libish, and he said, he did it. Liar. We took dip in the sea and left all wet and sticky. Anu I[Anu Fransis] was feeling little dizzy. When we were to enter the van, show pointed to a tree branch lying near by and screemed snake. When we reached paravoor, there were some procession going on. I said, ‘Pooram Pooram’. Anu I, looked at it and asked, innocently, ‘Is it Thrissur Pooram?’.

And so that was over. All was over, leaving us with lot of memories that will cherish for a long-long time…