Heaven is green in colour - Part II

It was the 3rd of September and time had come for me to leave Trichy (ahh...dear old Trichy - my hometown! The best part of this visit was that I actually saw WATER flowing over the Cauvery riverbed probably for the second time in 5 years).

I was to board the Trivandrum-Jodhpur express at Shoranur (Kerala), for which I first needed to go to Coimbatore. I took the Jan Shatabdi express, which by the way, is one of the better trains running in Tamil Nadu, if not in India. The seats were extremely comfortable for one of my inconsiderable bulk, though I wonder whether some of my more dimensionally challenged acquaintances would have liked them. Still, the train took off and I was there, curled up with a nice book in hand, lazily reading through and also enjoying the greenery whooshing past me. In fact, a part of the journey was along the banks of the Cauvery and it was a very soothing experience, almost preparing me for the paradise that was about to invade my senses.

Fourand a half hours and a nice home-packed breakfast later, I was in Coimbatore waiting at the railway station waiting for my dormmate Kela (I really don't bother remembering his original name nowadays :-)) to come and pick me up. And come he did, and we zipped off to his home in his Dad's car. I was again treated to a nice lunch there...the pleasures of home-cooked food are beyond description. And, as befits a sumptuous lunch, I dozed off only to wake up an hour later, realising that we were late and had to rush to catch the passenger train from Coimbatore to Shoranur. However, we managed to reach there in time only to find that the all the available seating space was already occupied. We were optimistic about our chances of getting a seat and decided to rough it out initially by standing - not a big deal for people who have been in Mumbai Metros, but still wholly unexpected.

For those who haven't been to that side of the country, Tamil Nadu is by and large an arid region with little rainfall coming its way past the ghats of Kerala. And Kerala (it markets itself as "God's own Country" - I see very little reason to disagree :-)) is like the repository of all the greenery that iss missing in Tamil Nadu. During our train trip, we could literally see the physical disparity between the states materialising before our eyes. There we were, chugging along some plains with half-arid, bushy vegetation one minute and the next minute we were transported to another world where teak forests and eucalyptus trees ruled supreme. We were thinking that the person who drew the boundary sure had a good sense of humour. I think he must have been a Keralite. Even the rain gods seemed to recognise the divide. There was one bridge near which there was a board with the writing "Welcome to Kerala" on one side and "Welcome to Tamil Nadu" on the other. I swear only one side of that board was wet.

The journey into Kerala continued and we were admiring the scenery, and polishing off some groundnuts in the meantime. Finally, some benevolent souls alighted at some station and we managed to squeeze into a luggage rack on top of one of the seating areas. We even managed to get a couple of cups of tea on top. It was an awesome experience to sip tea, chat and chug along. Soon, Shoranur beckoned...