Backwaters of Kerala

After a nearly two week trip dowm the East Coast of India and up the West Coast we are now in Kollam. It seems like a long strange trip but it has only been two weeks. We took some much needed R&R in Verkala and just finished a houseboat trip as described below.

We board our luxury thatch clad houseboat in Alleppy for our serene trip though the backwaters of Kerala about noon after a hectic morning bus ride to the embarkation point. We are greeted by our captain, cook and engineer.

The day before we took a canoe ride though some narrow deep green canals shaded by overarching palms to keep us relatively cool in the hot humid afternoon. It was a languid trip reminiscent of one we took through the Mekong Delta last year. We visited a rope making concern where they take the husks of coconuts, soak them in water for three weeks and then spin the husks into fiberous strands to create rope. This is all done by hand and labor intensive. We paddled further and stopped for chai, which is a milk and tea concoction flavored with cloves or nutmeg and sugared to the max.

Anyway, back to the houseboat. The boat was only three months old and contained a front veranda which was our living room, a stateroom with attached private bath, kitchen and crews' quarters in the rear. Since we were a little late in arriving, the other 1500 boats that sail out of Aleppy had already departed so we missed the chaos. We also chose a one way trip from Kolam to Aleppy to avoid the crush. The trip was much the same as our canoe trip the day before but on a grander scale. We sat in padded wicker chairs and floated past villages while fisherman fished from canoes. Unfortunately, I had done the same trip 35 years before and the character of everything had changed. Where once stood isolated villages of thatch along the water ways, there is now an almost constant chain of brightly painted concrete houses. What were once poor fishing villages is now endless suburbia serviced by the river on one side and a road on the other that was not there 35 years ago. Before I was on local boats, powered by steam engines that looked exactly like the African Queen (Bogart movie). Now everything is diesel powered and the waterways are suffering accordingly. Still life goes on much as it did for hundreds of years. One hears the slap slap slap of women beating their laundry on the rocks at rivers edge. Almost naked fisherman cast their hand nets to see what fortune will bring them.

This is all capped by the bizarre sight of Amma's ashram (the hugging guru) which is a fifteen story complex in bright pink piercing the late afternoon sky. We stop briefly to explore the ashram and its 20,000 devotees from all over the world. Amma is off on a hugging tour so we miss her.

Soon after embarking we are treated to a royal Keralan lunch of chili fried river fish, several vegetable curries and rice. We are starving and dig in with gusto.

As we continue down the waterway we slip into a narrower channel and get an overview of the village life which is more of the same as described above. We watch the sun set over Amma's but get no respite from the heat and spend a fairly miserable night in the hot humid air that is little cooled by our room fan.

The next day dawns overcast but cooler and we are enchanted by the misty morning light and a village loudspeaker that plays wake up music for all within earshot and know we are in India.