Northern Kerala - Unlimited

I started from Bangalore city Railway station at 9.00 in a cool friday night and reached Mangalore at 8.30 am in the morning. After spending around five hours in the city I got Chennai mail and started  my journey back to home. After leaving Mangalore and crossing the borders of Karnataka, I entered to the ‘Kasarkode' district of Kerala.

Kerala is famous as a tourism hub, in the world tourism map. Often people prefer the most sought after destinations in the southern side of Kerala like ‘Kovalam‘,'Shankumukham‘, ‘Varkala‘, ‘Allappey' beaches; ‘Thekkady‘, ‘Agasthyavanam‘,‘ Kumali‘ etc hill stations; lakes and Canal Networks etc. But Northern Kerala satisfies the thirsts of tourists. Places like ‘Wynad‘,‘Palakkad‘ have numerous hill stations and beautiful rivers.

Along with this Northern Kerala have a lot of rare art forms like ‘Krishnanattam‘,‘Theyyam‘,‘Chakyaar Koothu‘, ‘Kadhakali‘ etc.At the time of school times its learned that Kuthira puzha (Horse River – Don’t ask me how the name came), the north most river in Kerala, now after a decade I saw it for the first time. From that onwards there are many rivers, for many of them I don’t know the name, I asked to my fellow travelers too. A girl sitting next to me gave me the name for some of them, but other I even they don’t know.

What is there in a name? It’s all are the art by nature. Her magnanimous works lay as a necklace in mother earth’s neck. These rivers are the rare treasures of Kerala – 44 major rivers flows through this small state. Except three all of them find salvation in Arabian sea.

The sight of the rivers itself is a refresher for mind. The wind coming from these rivers makes beautiful and sweet tones in our ears. But alas the never ending thirst of humans!!! Not even leave these beautiful rivers. They are filling these rivers with all the waste they can, so that after some time they can construct new houses in the riverbed.

I saw many famed places of 108 ‘Shiva’ and ‘Durga’ Temples of Kerala. After ‘Kasarkode’, we reached ‘Kannur’, ‘Mahe’ (Part of Pondicherry Union Territory). In this journey I saw ‘Eezhimala’ – famous for its newly coming Naval Academy and numerous rivers like ‘Valapatanam River’. As far as I remember in the past there was a proposal to build a great harbor in this river as it naturally have enough depth, and water flow is very good, but just like many other proposals by various state and central governments this too remain as a proposal and in most cases will remain as a proposal for ever. Anyway we can satisfied by the fact that at least there was a proposal.

After four hours and thirty minutes I reached the famous Calicut city. Calicut is the biggest city in northern Kerala, This city have trading relations with Arabs and even with the ancient Roman empire, The world famous exploration of a sea route to India by Portuguese ended in the beaches of Calicut, from there onwards the city maintained trading relations with Portuguese , Dutch and in the end with English.

But now in the modern India, Its nowhere near to the ancient glamour. Calicut – whose airport is one of the most crowded airports in India – doesn’t have enough number of flights operating to Gulf countries – which is the most sought after destination for Northern Keralites. Result – People have to go to other airports like Cochin, Bangalore, Mumbai etc.

I reached Calicut at 5.30 in the evening, and then went to home in bus.

Sajeev.