Paddy Field Resort Kottayam

הכל החל בלילה טרופי חם ודביק. מלא יתושי 01; ודברי 01; אחרים שעוק—...

After writing a whole section on Mankotta and then losing it I found some editorial in the Telegraph which sums it up much better than I had, this is what Tessa had to say about Mankotta.................

"I had heard about Mankotta Island through my uncle. All I knew was that it was a family home, a working farm that took guests on a w...

Well hi everyone at last lazy Liz gets round to writing on the blog!!!What an amazing trip so far. I have let Rick & the kids carry on writing as they are all doing such a great job, but I do feel compelled to write about our experience in Kottayam. We stayed at St Thomas's Seminary with about 300 brothers all practising to become priests. T...

Kerala, the state we are in, is renowned for its Backwaters, a large series of lakes and canals that stretches about 80kms south of Kochi and 10 kms inland. We had been told by a number of people that hiring a houseboat was a must to cruise these backwaters, so we headed to Alleppey, the centre of the houseboating trade, to head into the backwat...

We arrived in the busy town of Kochin and took an expensive ferry (3p a ticket) out to the island town of Fort Cochin (no fort) where accommodation is all about the 'homestays'. We stayed in the Princess Inn (no Princess) run by two friendly lads who spent their time chatting (up) the female backpackers who drifted in and out during our four day...

Sorry I've been slack again but should catch up again soon. After Kumily we went to a home-stay about 10km from Kottayam, right in the backwaters. If anyone has read "God of Small Things" by Arundati Roy, that is where it was set. It was a really picturesque place with a maze of narrow waterways lined with palm trees and paddy fields and a dotte...

The Bus trip to Margao was an experience. Just when you thought the bus was full the drivers assistant allowed another ten, then another ten, then ANOTHER ten. Human sardines is the nearest we can come to describing it. We were sitting beside the door and the drivers assistant (a very young boy) spent more time hanging onto the outside of the bu...

Alappuzha (Alleppey) Have been told many times now how beautiful the back waters of Kerela are so treated ourselves to the 22 hours trip in a private house boat with only 3 crew members and yourselves. Sounds pretty ideallic, and at times it was, but overall once youve been on the waters for an hour or two it does kind of look the same everywher...

10 am on a Monday morning and I'm sat at a terminal. Now this never happened when I was working. I'm sat in an Internet cafe in Kottayam. Though rather non-descript, Kottayam has been my overnight stop on the way to Kumily, which I hope will prove rather more interesting given that it offers Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, one of India's most popula...

Today (Friday), we waited at the hotel until about noon (after our usual 5:45 am morning religious hymns and sermons blaring over the loudspeakers), when our houseboat showed up to pick us up. The houseboats of Kerala (or Ketu Vellams) are originally rice boats that were used to connect the villages along the canals and rice paddies to the rice ...