Trivandrum Excursions

We had several good excursions while in Trivandrum.

We spent a terrific afternoon with Aditi walking in the historic area of Trivandrum on a tour she calls Walking Tour Kingdom of Gods Trail. She is a wonderful storyteller, and this place has some fanciful stories to tell.  Aditi is very easy to be with and since we were on a private tour she set the pace of the walk to a comfortable level for us.

We met Aditi at Villa Maya, which turned out to be our favorite restaurant in the city.  From there she took us by a number of the older and more interesting temples in the historic area of the city including:

  • Mithrananthapuram Trimurti Temple, which has the unusual distinction of being dedicated to all three Supreme Gods in Hinduism: Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer),
  • Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple is considered by many to be the richest Hindu temple in the world with treasures and gold hidden in an underground level.  On our tour with Aditi, we just passed by one side of the temple but she told us the story of the relationship between the Temple and local Royal family that was the major source of the wealth. On the next day (see below) we spent more time there.
  • Ananthankadu Sree Nagaraja, which features statuary and rituals dedicated to the Snake God, Sree Nagaraja.

Our walk ended at Sree Padam Palace, one of the many ancient palaces in this neighborhood.  The total walk was roughly 2 hours long.

As anyone who has spent any time on this website will know, we plan much of our travel around the chance to visit a weaving village and Trivandrum presented a great opportunity for that.

The next morning we drove about an hour out of the city to Balarampuram to visit the weaving cluster there.  Handloom weaving at Balaramapuram and the region has a history that spans over 300 years.

Balaramavarma, the king of Travancore from 1798 to 1810 brought seven weaving families from Tamil Nadu to Balaramavarma to establish a weaving village with the purpose of producing fabrics for the members of the royal family.

To this day the weavers in Balaramapuram continue to practice the old handloom process using traditional pit looms and natural materials to create their textiles.  As befitting fabrics worthy of royals the finest sarees produced there use Kasavu, silver thread coated with real gold.

In addition to the really beautiful high-end saris the weavers there are also producing handsome cotton fabrics in basic simple patterns for more utilitarian uses. 

The master weaver there who sets the patterns is a real artist and once they realized we had a good knowledge of weaving both he and the manager/owner were very generous with their time as well.  

After our visit to Balaramapuram we drove back into the city and had a terrific Kerala Sadya lunch at Mothers Veg Plaza.  You can read more about that on the Trivandrum Restaurants page.

After lunch we visited Sree Padmanabhaswamy, the wealthy Hindu temple mentioned above in our walk with Aditi.  The day before we had walked by one side of this temple but this day we got to appreciate the impressive walk up the stone paved pedestrian mall leading to the Temple and to view the interior from the entry door. 

Many of the very well-dressed pilgrims paying homage here took the opportunity to take a souvenir photo.  Many were also interested in talking to us, which made it an even better experience.

On the way back to Uday Suites we made one last stop of the day to witness the raw natural beauty of the Arabian Sea at Shanghumugham Beach.  It was a cloudy, windy day and this particular “beach” is not one that would be covered with sun worshipers laying on white powdery sand but gave more of a feeling of being on the edge of the planet.