4. Encountering a cobra

The villages nearby felt untouched by the two centuries that had passed since the house was built. We saw men plucking coconuts and betel nuts, with no tools other than the strong leg muscles that they used to climb agilely up seventy-foot-tall palm trees. On the riverbank nearby, we explored old fishing trawlers, now abandoned in favor of mechanized boats.

As we walked through the lush foliage bordering the home, my elderly great-grand-uncle, who served as our guide, suddenly stopped us, gesticulating to stay silent and pointing to the shrubbery beyond the path – a giant cobra slithered insouciantly by, as we stared wide-eyed at it! 

An abandoned fishing boat and a bridge over the river nearby

Paths outside the ancestral home where we encountered a cobra