Goa & Kerala

🗓 posted May 08, 2025 by Josh Erb
🔢 672 words
🏷
a dispatch from: Thekkady, Kerala

We did a bit of domestic travel during the month of April. So I wanted to take a second to share a rough and ready travel log about them.

Why have the updates have been sluggish?

You may have noticed that it's been a minute since I've posted any travel blogs. There are a few reasons for this. The main practical one in this case is that, when you live abroad for an extended period of time, you start to experience long stretches of nothing very interesting happening. You've adapted to quotidian life and as result you're either blind to the things people from back home might find interesting, or you've already written about them and don't have any new thoughts worth sharing.

As is often the case, these long stretches of nothing-worth-reporting are usually punctuated by big bursts of activity. Visitors come and disrupt the routine. Other pretenses present themselves for getting outside of the little box you've created for yourself in your new country. Such were our circumstances in the month prior.

The other reason I haven't been posting too many travel updates here is because I continue to be focused on writing & submitting fiction and querying agents about helping me place my novel manuscript. It's counterintuitive, but the less writing you see on this site, the more writing I am doing in pursuit of other goals.

Recent trips

When you travel with a toddler, the scope of your adventures become inherently limited in many ways. This is a truth we were aware of, but hadn't really accepted until recently. So, while there are two neighboring states we've visited recently, neither of our trips were as adventurous as they may have been a few years ago.

That being said, we took a trip down to Goa last month and got to spend some chill time on the beach away from the noise and pollution of Mumbai.

On the beach at sunset in Goa.

Just after that, my parents came to visit us, which was a great excuse to head south and explore another part of Kerala. Previously we'd been to the backwaters, but this time we went up into the mountains to a hill station called Thekkady and spent some time in and around the Periyar National Park.

I will say this, it took us roughly 10 hours to go from our front door in Mumbai to the resort we ended up staying at. 4 and a half of which were just switchbacks in a car. Even now, a couple weeks later, if I close my eyes, I still feel like I'm turning back and forth and back and forth.

We saw some beautiful scenery and animals, but I don't know that I'd ever willingly agree to taking that trip again.

On the way to Thekkady we passed several tea plantations.

As I was walking across the resort one day, this Malabar gray hornbill did a fly-by and then landed nearby.

Minutes after we entered the National Park, we caught this Malabar giant squirrel nibbling on a jackfruit.

We saw several Indian elephants in the wild. This guy was noteable because he had tusks, a sign of success for anti-poaching efforts.

On the way back down the mountain, we passed this guy. Honestly, I just admired his rig.

Back in Mumbai with visitors, I had an excuse to check out parts of the city I haven't been to yet. One standout was the Dadar Flower Market.

A morning walk through the Dadar Flower market.

impending trips

So that's it! Hope you enjoyed the pictures and the prevaricating about why I don't post updates more frequently. Later this month we're heading outside of India for the first time in 9 months, which is exciting! I'm interested to see if being in Europe will highlight how we've changed as a result of our time in India.

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