Travel Bug Bites 95-year-Old Annakutty

A 95-year-old great-grandmother from loves globetrotting and speaks only in Malayalam, be it in Italy, France or the US.

At 95, most people would be thinking and pondering about their life after death. Not 95-year-old Annakutty Simon.

This great grandmother is deeply in love… a love for travelling across the globe. Clad in her traditional Christain attire and lovely big ear rings, the woman, who has 20 great-grandchildren, started travelling to foreign locales at the ripe young age of 75.

Language for Annakutty has been no bar in her travels although she speaks only Malayalam. “Wherever I go, I speak only Malayalam as I know just that. Still I have never had any major communication problem abroad. Those whom I ask my doubts in Malayalam clear them in their language, but by God’s grace I get my answers.” she says.

Annakutty belongs to Kuninji village in Idukki district and prefers travelling alone despite having enough and more companions to travel with. Her immediate family members alone round up to around 70 people, this including her children, grandchildren and great grand kids.

Her maiden foreign visit was to Germany in 1997. Annakutty says she never felt afraid even when she boarded the flight for the first time in her life from Thiruvananthapuram and instead, it was her children who were worried. Although the journey, via Sri Lanka and Dubai, was not at all an easy one for her, Annakutty with only a lower primary education managed to reach Germany safe and sound.

Her dream: to visit Calvary, a site that is immediately outside the walls of Jerusalem. And that’s not all. The adventurous Annakutty has also acted in the recent Malayalam movie Aby.