The Famous Biriyani Recipe

Was watching the movie Ustad Hotel yesterday and few memories kicked in then. I believe, Kareemikka's biriyani is an actual copy of kayika's biriyani. It was Thomas Muttithodathil who took me to kayees hotel, while we were in college. We have gone there several times to get the parcel, in his signature gypsy and ate it at his home, enjoying the taste of each and every rice in it. 

Want to realy try kayees biriyani recipe. But am sure there will be one part missing - the secret ingedient. Only his grandson knows what it is...

The Cherai Beach

Cherai beach - It is a place of wonderful college memories.

I remember, during college days, visiting this place with my college friends, at 2 in the morning.  In four bikes we travelled from CUSAT campus, and rested on the newly constructed foot path, listening to the voice of the waves. Luckily, the patrolling police did not find us. Other wise we would have been caught for suspicious gathering. Thank God. 

I used to share these college days stories with Ani and she wanted to visit this place. In-fact,  I never taken her to Cochin before. 

We went for the morning service to Corner Stone church, Vytilla. After the service we went to Marin Drive Cochin. Had an ice cream from a shop there and we strolled for sometime through the walkway. Old memories came into my mind like a soft breeze. I shared some with Ani and laughed over those incidents. It was a wonderful moment.

Our next destination was +Seematti Silks. It was one of the places we had in our travel plan. Spent some time in shopping there and started off to Mattanchery and then we realized that our plan will not workout due to heavy traffic. And it's pathetic than Bangalore. Cochi changed a lot.

We shifted our directions to cherai beach then.

Cherai area was flooded with people than we expected. There was some inauguration ceremony going to happen and whole are was occupied by tourists and police. Vehicles were heavily clogged that we couldn't take the main road back home and we were forced to take the Munambam route. But that became a blessing route for us. 

The route was awesome. As we moved on we could find calm and quite place where we could get down and click a couple of snaps.

In between the pine trees

Ani's Hand. A Macro Shot

Munambam has various home stays. For foreigners, that would be a heaven, to indulge in the local culture and delicacies. And few kilometers down the bridge, we could see Chinese fishing nets ready for action. And the view of docked fishing boats were a real visual treat for the eyes.

It is around 5 and half years since I visited Cochin. It has changed a lot, but the memories remains the same...

Indian Coffee House

Those who studied at CUSAT calls the place, "ICH". Thats the short form for the Indian Coffee house. For a visitor ICH will be a strange name and need to ask what it is.

But for all the students at my college, it was/is the bencmarking point. Almost everything has an ICH touch there.

Where is the Btech campus?, "thats left from ICH"
Where is the library, "thats right from ICH"...
Where should we stand for the bus pickup, "Infront of ICH".
Macha you lost five papers..."ok ok lets party at ICH".
Teacher, "where is Rajesh"...."I saw him at ICH".

The uniform of the suppliers at ICH may track back to the kingdom era, that my friend called one of them and placed an order, "Mr. King, one coffee here"...

That place will stay for ever in the nostalgic memory of those from CUSAT.