It is not without reason that people of Kerala (a southern state in India, bordering the Arabian sea) call their state with pride “God’s own country”. The never ending lush green landscape criss-crossed with rivers and back waters, bountiful rains, a salubrious weather, a sedentary lifestyle of the people who, even in the present day, display an extraordinarily simple lifestyle – practically everything in Kerala has a divine charm. Keral indeed is a tourists’ paradise in South India.

Kerala is a state where religious harmony is taken for granted. Kerala is the place where stark communism and a strong theism peacefully co-exist.

Kerala’s greenery, coconut tree studded coasts and backwaters have been consistenly attracting tourists from across the globe. The Kerala tourism development Corporation is doing an excellent job in promoting Kerala as one of the “must see” tourist place in India.

Kerala is a much sought-after place of religious pilgrimage too. The Guruvayur SriKrishnaTemple attracts a huge volume of devotees all round the year, a phenomenon to compete with what Tirumala, the abode of Lord Venkatesa does at Andhrapradesh state.

Kerala is the state where, like West Bengal, the worship of God in the form of Divine Mother (called in varying names like Parasakthi, Bagavathi, Kali, Jagadamba, Narayani and so on) is widely practiced. And it is the state where the Divine mother has opted to take birth in human form as Mata Amritanandamayi to conquer the world with her loving embrace.

I visited Kerala recently to have the darshan of Mata Amritanandamayi at her village Vallikkavu, adjascent to Kayangulam (near Kollam). (Please see my Hub “How to visit Amma’a abode Vallikkavu, at Kerala”).

This visit is was an opportunity for my daughter to make full use of her newly acquired Canon digital camera model Ixus 970 IS and bring out her hidden talent of photography to our notice and appreciation.

The time of our visit was mid August, when the monsoon rains in Kerala keeps playing hide and seek. My daughter is an avid cloud watcher and the monsoon sky of Kerala offered myriod patterns of cloud formations, not normally seen in our cityscape at Chennai.

I am posting here below, several photographs, particularly related to the beautiful cloud formations in Kerala that my daughter C.V.Deepika captured in her Canon Ixus 970 IS digital camera.