Back at 'The Quarterdeck'.

For Lekha and me, the day had begun at 4 when her cellphone alarm jingled. Went about our chores and wound up Raj Nivas in a systematic manner. There was a let up in the rain and consequently, it was a bright and sunny morning. Though I'd planned to kick off at 6, by the time I'd handed over the keys of the house to Syamala, the caretaker's wife as he had gone for tapping the milk from his rubber trees.

We'd kicked off by 7. Stopped by at the snake temple at Randalummoodu and the pujari gave me the 'prasadam'. Mom had put a habit in me that whenever I crossed the compact shrine, I must put in an offering.

 From then on, it has become quite a usual practice!

I decided to take the Kottarakkara route, today. And curved off from Adoor on to the KP Road and reached the snake temple at Mannarasala, for darshan. Thankfully, the rain held and the crowd was manageable. We'd breakfast after the darshan and resumed our journey. We'd taken about 45' out the temple.

Our next stop was at Dr Sreekanth Mallan's dental clinic at Muhamma. Lekha has been complaining about a pain on one of her teeth. It was extracted and she's been advised a course of antibiotics over the next three days. The whole procedure took under an hour, had a chat with the doctor as usual on all subjects except dentistry, bought the medicines from the nearby medical store and we resumed our journey.

Around a half past 1, after crossing Chalakkudy we had stopped at the Anand Bhavan for lunch. Had meals. After a halt of about half an hour we'd resumed our journey, passed through the town of Thrissur and got on to the road to Guruvayur, which has many deviations now, thanks to a massive road work in progress. Crossed Kunnamkulam, turned off from Kottappady towards Thampuranpadi Junction, Mammiyur and finally to Guruvayur.

Bought our fruit basket from Ravindran, grocery from Jayan and had a cuppa tea. The time was about a quarter to 5. Soon, we were at The Quarterdeck, opened up the house and the unpacking was carried out while watching our favourite serials. Kittu and his children were in attendance and Lekha had given them food.

Went through our evening chores, had a quick, light dinner, had a bit of work on the computer and we hit the sack by 11.

Tailpiece.

A hectic day but the drive was smooth and we could do all that we planned to do.