I want to ride an elephant. We'll have the discussion about the ethics of elephant riding in a later post, so hold on to those self-righteous thoughts of outrage for just a bit. The fact remains, I'm in India and I would like to ride an elephant. I mention this because Kerala is not your typical tourist destination. I wasn't coming here to "do" anything other than... see if people look like me. So I decided to add a little adventure to my trip. There are a lot of places to ride elephants in India, so I did my homework and found a place that sits right with me (see what I did there?). That place is in area called Thekkady and the closest airport is in Fort Kochi (aka Cochin). So I made that my next destination. I left Goa in the afternoon, flew two hours to Chennai, a one-hour layover, and then another hour to Kerala.
Once I got to Kerala, I didn't want to take any chances with sketchy cabs, so I waited another 30 minutes in a line to get a real cab. Luckily my driver was awesome. The fastest way to my hostel involved taking a quick ferry trip, so we did that. Which was kind of a cool addition to the journey.
When I checked in at the hostel, the guy at the front desk was like "oh, you're here with a bunch of friends, right?" and I replied, "no" but I'm my head I replied, "no, but thanks for rubbing it in, jerk." Jokes, jokes. The dude was actually a super cool guy, tall, lanky, long hair, sort of Rastafarian-looking, and really nice. I went upstairs, put my stuff down, and came down to relax a little in the lounge. I met some cool people, one of which was biking around the world. He'd gone something crazy like 30,000 miles on his bike. What?!
I didn't hang out for long because I was exhausted. I went back up to my five-person room and I was kind of glad to see that there was still no one else there at the time (though it looked like most of the other beds had people's stuff on them). I passed out pretty quickly, but a little while later, I figured out why the guy at the front desk thought I was there with friends. It turns out those other beds were occupied by three friends who were here on vacation. They came in and didn't realize I was sleeping at first. Which is totally fine because it's a hostel and you just sort of have to get used to these things. These guys turned out to be super friendly. They introduced themselves and invited me to drink with them. I politely declined and they politely decided to take it to the lounge so I could sleep, which was awesome of them to do. After which I very quickly passed out again. SLEEP: it does a body good.
CONTINUE ON to Fort Kochi Part 2: The Backwaters of Fort Kochi
Once I got to Kerala, I didn't want to take any chances with sketchy cabs, so I waited another 30 minutes in a line to get a real cab. Luckily my driver was awesome. The fastest way to my hostel involved taking a quick ferry trip, so we did that. Which was kind of a cool addition to the journey.
When I checked in at the hostel, the guy at the front desk was like "oh, you're here with a bunch of friends, right?" and I replied, "no" but I'm my head I replied, "no, but thanks for rubbing it in, jerk." Jokes, jokes. The dude was actually a super cool guy, tall, lanky, long hair, sort of Rastafarian-looking, and really nice. I went upstairs, put my stuff down, and came down to relax a little in the lounge. I met some cool people, one of which was biking around the world. He'd gone something crazy like 30,000 miles on his bike. What?!
I didn't hang out for long because I was exhausted. I went back up to my five-person room and I was kind of glad to see that there was still no one else there at the time (though it looked like most of the other beds had people's stuff on them). I passed out pretty quickly, but a little while later, I figured out why the guy at the front desk thought I was there with friends. It turns out those other beds were occupied by three friends who were here on vacation. They came in and didn't realize I was sleeping at first. Which is totally fine because it's a hostel and you just sort of have to get used to these things. These guys turned out to be super friendly. They introduced themselves and invited me to drink with them. I politely declined and they politely decided to take it to the lounge so I could sleep, which was awesome of them to do. After which I very quickly passed out again. SLEEP: it does a body good.
CONTINUE ON to Fort Kochi Part 2: The Backwaters of Fort Kochi
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