Kerala - Ah!

Back from a whirlwind vacation which started off with visiting relatives - my grand-uncle and family in Sreerangam, Hubby's relatives in Kochi and Trivandrum and then finally relaxing in Thekkady for the last 4 days - and yes that means a LOT of driving, all by hubby, with navigation by yours truly :).

And I have to elaborate first of all about the navigation - I really mean it in the Amazing Race style of sitting on the backseat and saying turn left, right and so on! I was completely awe-struck by the use of Google maps on the iPad with 3G. Except for some local gyaan on state of roads and traffic and so on, we never had to ask the way even to find our hotels in all the places we stayed in!

I realized that 4 days at a resort is a good time-frame especially when kids are around (we've usually done 3).. plus with all the driving around that we did, we pretty much didn't want to do any walking/looking around the first day though we reached in the afternoon.

Day 1 - Chilling in the room, checking out the local resort activities like Housie.. won back the price of our tickets between D and me so pretty happy with that :).

Day 2 - We came across a local guide by chance while reaching the resort, so decided to try out the sights.  Did the "standard" elephant ride - this was mainly for S's sake as our last memory of our elephant ride in Munnar was not so pleasant (nothing drastic, just a dislike of the feel of the elephant's moving backbone along with feeling sorry for the poor fellow). So now that's done, and no more until the kids grow up and want to take one on their own maybe :).

Also visited a spice plantation near the elephant park - came across interesting facts like the number of lines on the petal of the flower of the cardamom plant is equal to the number of pods in the cardamom :). First time for me to see a cardamom plant too!

Yet another amazing experience was getting to see a grape farm - this was across the border (which is pretty close by) into Tamilnadu and downhill from Thekkady. Felt on this vacation for the first time that I was such a "city-dweller" but it was worth it as it only added more excitement and wonder :).

Most of the afternoon was spent in getting tickets for and going for a 2 hour boat ride on Periyar Lake. This is the same lake where there was a boating accident about 2 years back, but they seem to have put railings and safeguards in place since then and except for the fact that the lifejackets provided seem bedraggled and in fact none were provided for the children, it was a nice and picturesque experience.

If you are going with children I would advocate the 1 hour ride, as the absence of seeing animals during long stretches of time becomes a bit of a drag, especially when you have loud interrogations of "When are we getting back, this is so boring, there are no animals!" in the background ;). The animals are in fact clearer in my photos than to the naked eye thanks to the wonderful zoom of my Nikon S9100 (and of course my steady hand, but i'm not taking all the credit ;)).

As usual my vacation post gets longer and longer ;).. and I'm tired of uploading photos for the day, so rest in Part 2 coming soon!

Judgmental? Me?...

I have always been the "non-advice giving" type.. Having been on the receiving side of all the usual "No baby yet?", "No second one yet?" and of course all the in-between stuff on how to raise your child (!) I always hold myself back from telling anyone what to do in situations unless explicitly asked about it!

But during my recent vacation I found myself sitting in judgement a wee bit (ok maybe quite a lot) on other parents in the resort. Still no advice of course, but LOTS of judgement :). Maybe I feel 6+ years as a parent has made me wise or maybe I do pride myself just a little on some parenting philosophies, but whatever the reason, it really bothers me that in the name of being "nice" or not wounding the confidence of the child, this child can get away with nearly any kind of behaviour in a public place.

In one family I found that when the child knocked down a glass, there was not even a gentle mention of "Oh you've knocked it down!". Instead the immediate reaction seemed to be "Oh don't worry someone will clean it up!". This without even an actual request to the staff to do the actual cleaning, they were supposed to just seamlessly do it because that was their function! I was quite horrified because I would have definitely added a bit to the child about being careful, in fact on our table we keep pushing the glasses inside if they are on the edge (are we completely crazy?!). Ok this was not really an example of bad behaviour on the part of the child, only on the part of the parents(!). But so many other instances of kids running around, knocking others chairs, getting in the way and generally being annoying, with the parents seemingly turning a blind eye. Not sure if they were embarassed to react, or if this is the way the children are brought up generally!!

While I am on a rant anyway, the other thing that really gets to me is kids being overweight/obese at a young age. I know in many families the focus is on "healthy looking", and that is the parents' choice as long as the child is healthy and active, but when I see kids actually labouring to move around I think someone should be doing a better job of watching out! This is why I literally bristle if anyone tells me my kids are thin - I would not have it any other way!! With my personal experience of being "thin" for most of my early life, I still had to deal with all the post-pregnancy weight/tummy fat and body image issues, and I can not even imagine already starting off on the wrong side of this at the age of <5 years!!

And I'm done for the day! Actual vacation post coming up soon, I'm still in trying to straighten out the house mode, hope you all are having lovely holidays/festive times at home :).