With the exception of our weeklong excursion to Hampi and Bangalore, Joylani have spent the last month at the beach. If you’ll recall our first post from Goa, it was so great to get to the beach. And its been a great month since then. We’ve had a string of good guesthouses, mostly part of a familys’ home and mostly overlooking the beach/ocean. Our three weeks in Kerala has been a story of lazy days spent at the beach and tons of seafood. While I never once got bored or sick of the food in Calangute or Varkala, I think I’ve reached my limit here in Kovalam. I love seafood, but I’m beginning to crave non-seafood dishes. I love lounging at the beach all day without any worries, but I’m beginning to yearn for a change. Yesterday is a good example, filled with indicators that we’re ready for a change. We set off in the morning for Thiravanathapuram (for obvious reasons, it still goes by its old name of Trivandrum), to explore the state capitol and run some errands. Indicator number 1: We left the beach for the city. When we arrived, we found a cheap little hole-in-the-wall restaurant to eat breakfast. Indicator number 2: Joylani craves south Indian food (breakfasts especially) and prefers hole-in-the-wall (even with all the unsanitary conditions) places to nicer restaurants serving Westernized food (which is pretty surprising to me). Also, I get agitated if my breakfast is too bland- who would’ve ever guessed Joylani would search out dingy Indian restaurants and I would like my breakfast spicy? When we returned in the afternoon, we just hung out on our balcony rather than go swimming. Indicator number 3: When we first got the beach, we couldn’t stay out of the water. Now, we’re content to stay in the cooler indoors- Kovalam might be the hottest/most humid place we’ve been so far. The last two nights, we haven’t ordered any seafood. Indicator number 4: I’m not indulging in the thing I like most about Kerala. What’s the point of staying at the beach, if you’re not going to swim, hang out in the city during the day, and skip out on the seafood?

Luckily, we’re leaving tomorrow to celebrate our second anniversary in what I consider to be one of the best places on the globe. See you in a week!

load up the boats to cast the nets

Pull in the nets

Check out the catch

Box ‘em up

Crowds come to start buying fish

Fish

Or you go out in your boat and fish

But these boats work on the principal that wood floats, not displacing water…