Day 5

After last night's sad scenes, the next day wasn't that cheerful. After two nights of Munnar, the last destination was Cochin. We had breakfast, and left for Cochin in two buses.
My roommates and I sat on the first row of bus, because that place seemed better in terms of motion sickness or related problems.

Skipping the beginning half-hour, the entire journey was spent talking to our professors. The whole of journey, my roommates and two professors were talking about old songs, old pictures, advertisements, cartoons, films, Hollywood films, etc. They almost spoke on everything. Due to their talks, it seemed like we reached Cochin faster. Though I wasn't talking, I was indeed listening to them entirely. It was a fun conversation.

The distance to Cochin from Munnar is similar to Kumarakom-Munnar. The journey was long and we were prepared for the change in temperature (cold to hot). Everybody was dressed mostly in jackets or sweatshirts, but I kept all the winter clothes inside my luggage, and was dressed in grey three forth leggings, my brother's extremely loose blue coloured Jack & Jones t-shirt, grey fringe bag, black flip-flops and black Ray-Ban aviators. (And yes, I carried my broken camera too.)

On our way, the buses stopped at a Spice shop. I didn't know what to purchase from there, so I was passing my time. Later, I thought I should buy something and so I entered the shop. My friend was buying Malayalee saree, while I was looking for showpieces and souvenirs of Kerala. I was about to buy one of them, but later dropped the idea when my friends suggested me that the showpiece wasn't worth of purchase. So I picked up a homemade chocolate box and mix spices packet instead.

After the bill, we got in our buses, and the journey continued. As I was feeling a bit sick, I was using cloves to make me feel better. I also was sitting on the front seat, with legs stretched weirdly upon the front glass, and looking out of the glass, and pretending to drive the bus. It was funny how I was mentally changing the gears and steering the wheel!

We reached Cochin's hotel--The Dunes--after a tiring journey. We were hungry and it was extremely hot. The staff of this hotel was a bit overly strict and formal. When we were resting in their lobby, they asked us to go upstairs for lunch. It was too rude of them to just shoo us away.

So after all the students reached the hotel by a matador van, we went upstairs for food. We had expected something tasty, but the food sucked. Even in Ashirvaad and Blu Haze, the food was tasteless and repetitive. We had the tasteless and the warm food. (They could've at least warmed it up more.) The best thing probably was the sweet dish; it was strawberry ice-cream. Each one of us took not less than three scoops of ice-cream; it was heavenly.

The worst thing was that the food was served on the roof-top. Though there was a little opaque shade, it was too hot. All of us were tired and were sweating. After food, we went to the washroom, combed hair, washed face with facewash, and put deodorant. We were to go visit an actual media related industry now. (Yeah, finally.)

It was disgusting as we were in same clothes since morning 8:30 and had traveled to a different city with so much of distance between. But somehow we gathered our spirits and went for small bus-ride towards a closed printing press. The guy there explained us the process of printing and off we went to G One Net afterwards.

We reached there only to hear that they couldn't allow us in. Due to 26th January and the strikes, a lot of work was pending and so they couldn't allow. Same happened with Malayala Manorama newspaper. We journalism students were so excited to visit it, but they cancelled it too. It was pretty frustrating. The worst part was the hospital visit of two juniors.

One of the girls, a very good Karate player, was being played prank with. Her classmate booed her and she fell down. She just had had a surgery done, and due to this, she tore her ligament. She was immediately rushed to the hospital. All of us were waiting for her and the course coordinator who wasn't with us that time.
The second girl couldn't take the climate change and the bus journey, and she fainted. We were all waiting outside the G One Net for some help. The three starred hotel next to it had some problem with that I guess. The manager was giving us the look. Kerala is not at all a friendly state, that's what I have observed. God knows how we were mistaken to wait there when we had no bus to go inside.

Soon, the buses came and we went inside. We waited in the stable bus for more than an hour. It was extremely hot and it was miserable; it was just worsening. Then after lot of time, the two girls returned. The bus finally moved. It was humid and hot. And I was suffocated. I felt that the oxygen supply was too less for me. This little trip towards our new hotel--Hotel PJ Princess Regency--was sucky.

We drove for another 20 minutes until we reached the hotel. The Dunes was short of eight rooms as many tourists had not checked out fearing the strikes would continue. So at the last moment, we shifted to PJ Princess. After reaching, they directed us to their hall. It was like a marriage hall.
The food was yummy enough; it was better than the first three hotels. After the food, we took our luggage which was in the bus. The rooms were allocated; we went upstairs to our room.

Everybody was tired. Due to shortage of rooms, few students were shifted to another hotel. They were shifted at 1:00 in the night. Just imagine; getting up at 5:30 in the morning and then finally resting the bodies at 1:30 in the night. I pitied them; but the situation was totally out of control.

As we were tired, we slept at 1:00 or something. We were sad too as the next morning we were leaving back for home.
xoxo