Pallakunnu (or maybe it's Una or Bekal)

Trip Start May 12, 2005

Trip End May 14, 2006

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Where I stayed

Eeyam Lodge

(Kannur hotels)

Flag of India Pallakunnu, India
Tuesday, November 1, 2005

6-7 days of beaching it up.... more coconut palms than one can imagine..... and no tourists!! This call really came up trumps, the beach was magnificant, and deserted. Dolphins just offshore, a nice little bodysurfing wave. A sanded over river mouth for a freshwater dip. Fishermen bringing in thier boats and emptying their catch. The surrounding villages had a large muslim population, so Diwali was very sedate, although the we were here for Eid (the end of Ramadan). Stuff was really really cheap, even for india. We spent under $15 a day for everything for the pair of us!!!

Eeyam lodge provides basic accomodation but Ajith, the manager, is an absolute gem of a bloke. A big shared balconey right up in the palm fronds provided a meeting point for the 4 other foreigers in this neck of the woods. James (aussie) and Katie ( a pom) hung around for a few beach cricket sessions, fish bbq's on the roof and the odd cold one

baywatch-esque

. A dutch fella joined in on the fun for a couple of days.... and there is Rennie. Mates with Hunderwasser, he is an 83 year old artist who spends 6 months a year in india. Name a place anywhere on the earth's surface and he has been there, fascinating bloke and we guess an artist of some importance.

Helping to keep us under 15 beans a day was the pure veg resturant next to eeyam lodge... thalis were 11 rupees and bloody good and the fellas running the place must have been smiling when the wind changed!!!

This part of the Kerelan coast has a very active fishing fleet. As mentioned, we had a couple of fish bbqs on the roof (Ajith let us get a small fire going). Big fishing village about 8km south, really friendly people here, Mark made friends with the manager of the local ice-factory on an initial visit and then we went back and bought a 4-5 kilo yellowfin tuna, fresh off the boat, for 100 rupees (a few cents over $3). Spuds in the coals, foil wrapped cutlets cooked to perfection, some lime, coriander and tomato/onion salad, Rennie pulled a cake from somewhere for desert and the feast was better than it sounds!!!

Not too much wrong with this place...the Muellahs early morning call to prayers being sent out from the surrounding mosques..

cows, coconuts and sunset

. but you get used to that. Plenty of reading done and watched some of the cricket between Sri Lanka and India...one mate of Ajiths was very funny, Ajith was being very diplomatic about the Pakistani eleven and his mate;
- "Pakistan cricketer very bad man....very very cheating man..."
Had a couple of good courtyard cricket sessions, had to be carefull, the ground floor of the lodge was a clinic for bubs, it had a sign above that read "TENDER COCONUTS NOT ALLOWED" ..... Ajith assured us that this rule applied only to the clinic and we could take any kind of coconuts back to our room that we liked.......

Lot'sa local trains
only a small station, our journey to Allepay was made up of three local passenger trains, in general class (if we take a day train, we usually buy a ticket on the day and jump into general)...when general gets crowded, it can be interesting...we are talking pretty jammed packed.... had a lunch off banana leaves (Mark loves eating with his hands) and then our last two trains....almost got stuck in the middle of a dust up on the last train (...never a dull moment in india) arrived fairly late in allepay fairly knackered.