Hi Friends, I am back with another travel diary. This is going to be a series of posts including different places we visited. So I hope you all are as excited as I am to tell you about my experience. I hope you all enjoy reading this 😊.
This is a trip I took along with some of my office friends and some of my college batchmates. We were a total of 6 people on this trip. The entire trip was for 7 days. This took a lot of planning and preparations, so we each decided to divide the roles and responsibilities of the journey accordingly. So according to our itinerary, the first place we were going to visit is Kochi, Kerala, India.
We started our journey from Ahmedabad, Gujarat where we boarded the train. The train was going to reach us to Ernakulam Junction. The journey was of 33 hours. It was quite a long journey but it didn’t feel so, as we all were enjoying ourselves because obviously we had each other’s company. Each one of us carried games with us. We played the game of sequence, then we played cards and so on and so forth. During the journey, we even alighted the train at various stations to view the scenic beauty.
We reached Ernakulam the next day at noon. We were so excited that at the station itself we clicked a lot of pictures. As soon as we got out of the station, we were trying to figure out whether we should book a cab or take the metro to our homestay. Just outside the station, there was a taxi stand where they were constantly asking us if we want a taxi. Finally we decided to take the metro. Now for that we needed to find the nearest metro station. We then reached the metro station and booked all of our tickets.
Our plan was to stay in Kochi only for a day, and we were going to leave the next morning itself. So we planned to visit Fort Kochi as we had only half a day. So we took the metro to the nearest station and then reached Fort. It was already around 4 pm, and it was nearing the closing time, so we quickly wanted to cover all the tourist spots. We first visited the Santa Cruz church as it would be closing soon. Before reaching the church, we had asked the cab driver to stop at all the beautiful places where we could take good pictures. So he first stopped at the Peter Celli road, where all the houses were built in Portuguese style. The walls also were so colorful that we had to take a lot of pictures. We then visited the church, which was very picturesque, and we all took a lot of photos outside the church. We weren’t allowed to go inside as the mass was going on, but we managed to get permission to have a look at the church from outside.
After visiting the church, we then went to the Indian Navy museum. The museum had a lot of interesting stuff, and also there was an entire collection dedicated specifically to the navy community. There was an entire lane showcasing 75 years of the Indian Navy. There was information right from 1947 till the latest date INS (Indian Naval Ship). It was all so fascinating and informative. After we were done visiting the museum, we were all very hungry. So we decided to have something in a cafe near the museum. So we all enjoyed some sweet lime juice. It was getting pretty dark, and we had to get to the ferry point just in time to get to our homestay, so we quickly made a move from there. We called our cab driver and asked him to leave us at the ferry point. We still were debating whether we should have dinner at Fort Kochi or near the city side. The cab driver took us to a sea-facing restaurant where we intended to have fried fish. But alas, we found the prices to be too high, so we decided to go straight to the ferry point ⛴️.
We got the ferry tickets for ₹10 each. On our way back we enjoyed the ferry ride. And took some pictures while on our ride. Truly it was a beautiful day and a joyful experience. When we reached our homestay, we ordered dinner and called it a day.
So here I come to the end of Day 1 of our trip. Obviously this was just half a day, but that was how we had planned it to be because we wanted to cover more of the beautiful places. After all, Kerala is also called “God’s Own Country,” and we truly wanted to experience it. I will be back with Day 2 of my travel diary. Until then, bye 👋, take care, everyone, and stay healthy. Also wishing everyone Happy Holidays 🎄🌲🧑🎄🧑🎄.