Kerala

In early March we traveled to Kerala for a 5 day - 4 night vacation. Kerala is the name of the Indian state on the west coast near the southern tip of India. India has 28 states and 7 territories.  The travel magazines said that the beaches in the City of Kovalam are among the top ten in the world.

I think the travel magazines were right.  We spent a lot of our time on Lighthouse Beach.  I kept thinking I'd bump into Jimmy Buffet.

A big part of the charm was that as this area is so isolated, and the Indian visa process is so difficult, that the beaches are relatively undeveloped.  There are no large resorts right on the beach and I felt it was as the Mexican beaches must have been in the 50's.  Everything is pretty low-key.

The girls learned how to ride boogie boards on Lighthouse Beach,






We sat out on the balcony of our hotel room each morning and watched as the local fisherman pulled in their nets 100' away.

We spent one day on a tour of an elephant rehabilitation center, again the sights from the car on the way there were pretty unbelievable.

After the horeback riding at Matheran, Deb wasn't up for riding an elephant, but the girl's and I gave it a go.










We stopped on the way there and bought 8 pounds of banana's from a roadside stand,  everyone then got a chance to feed the elephants.

The elephants then gave us a blessing

The next day we went on a 'backwater' tour, which basically means you hire a boat who takes you on a tour of a tropical freshwater swamp.  It was really too spectacular for me to put into words, so I'll just post a few of our photos.