Alleppey, Kerala
Being a Keralite, everyone would ask me about the tourist destinations in Kerala and my usual reply would be "I havent been to any of the tourist places except Trivandrum" or Thiruvananthapuram as it is called now. I have spent most of my life outside Kerala and visits to the "Gods own country" would be for summer holidays to my ancestral home. The regular visit to Kerala during my summer holidays is what made me love the "Gods own country". So an invitation to the backwaters in Alleppey was something that couldn't be rejected. Alleppey (or Kuttanad - what the whole region is called in folklore) is a unique place on earth. The county is crisscrossed by natural water canals through which the sea water would come inland. The canals essentially created a set of islands which was lush green with paddy fields in the center and coconut trees lined up on the edges. If some islands are not so populated, it would be covered with trees and wild bush...