To Cochin for Christmas

The one thing that is common to most of trips is that they are seldom planned. And this was true of the Christmas trip to Cochin as well. I learnt only on the 24^th of December that Shaarad was planning to visit Thomas at Cochin for Christmas, and since I wasn't doing anything over the long weekend, I thought I might as well head to Cochin myself. I remembered Sushil mentioning that he was going to some place in Kerala during the Christmas weekend by car, so I asked him if they had place for one more person. Not only they did have place, but they were also going to Cochin :) I had assumed that Sushil would be going with his relatives, but there was another pleasant surprise in store for me. He was going with a few of our seniors from MIT, so it was already promising to be a fun journey!!

The plan was to start early, and the cab was to pick me up from the Sony World junction at the ungodly hour of 4 am. I didn't remember the last time I had seen that time of day (or night), but I didn't want to be the villain in the plan, so I somehow got myself to the pickup location at 4. If you have already read "Christmas dinner & midnight mass", you know that I had had a late night the day before and had gotten into bed at 3 am. Having slept for barely 25 minutes, I couldn't wait to get into the cab, sink into some remote corner, and doze off. Imagine my horror when I call the cab driver and he says he was still asleep. He hurriedly apologises and promises to come in another 10 minutes. It was close to 5 am when he finally reached.

Having been totally impressed by the way Jonathan Yevin travels, I was carrying as less stuff as I possibly could in one light backpack. When we got to Vinay's place, he asked me to come up to his apartment to help him with the luggage (Note: This is a completely new Vinay, taking the number of Vinays I now know to 4). I almost fainted of shock when I saw the amount of luggage he was carrying. I think it was enough to start a small, happy family. The cab driver nearly fainted as well when he got a load of it. From here we went to Harish & Manjushri's place who had a few bags of their own. Then we went to pick up Sushil who wasn't traveling very light either. There was no way we could possibly fit all that luggage along with our unhealthy fat bodies in the interior of the vehicle, so most of it went on the luggage carrier atop the Innova.

Manju was having a bad day, and suffering from travel sickness, so we took frequent breaks along the way. The journey itself was a lot of fun, because the guys were super chilled out. We played Taboo and 20 questions along the way, endured Sushil's newly discovered PJs, had a MASSIVE lunch, got lost getting into Ernakulam, and reached quite late to Harish's parents' house. After spending some time with his folks, we headed out for dinner.

Thomas came to pick me up from the restaurant, and I said goodbye to the guys. Then we proceeded to Thomas' house which is a beautiful flat in a posh residential apartment complex next to one of the backwaters. If the exterior of the apartment is brilliant, the interiors are simply breath-taking. Thomas' folks have decorated their home very aesthetically, with a lot of interesting pieces of furniture. After a quick shower, and a light dinner prepared by Thomas' mom, I was off to bed.