The backwaters of Kerala in seven slow hours

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  Kochi, Kerala, India
Monday, September 22, 2008

Today we're heading off on a village tour, done by houseboat, through the backwaters, the main reason to visit Kerala. A white knuckle one-hour bus ride takes us to Kollam, south of Cochin, where we are met by Tempi, a long, skinny local man, aged about 50, with a habit of pointing with both hands at each person in the tour to stress each word in his sentences. "Today-we-are-going-to-see-two-things-on-the-way" he says, a sentence that gives him eye contact and rhythmic finger pointing at 11 people in a row. It's weird.

Anyway, the two things we are going to see are a lime factory - the powder substance, not the fruit - and a coir maker in a backwater village. We are directed to our houseboat, a handmade, totally cute floating room with wicker furniture. Two oarsmen join us, one for the back, one for the rear, each equipped with a bamboo pole about 12ft in length. Off we go...but you never get going. It's the slowest, most relaxing thing we've done in India so far. There is no commentary en route, and we're traveling for almost an hour before an oarsman out front shouts 'water snake!" and we watch a metre-long ripple, led by a tiny head poking above the surface, slithering past us. Andy, who had been sleeping, nearly jumps out of his skin at the word 'snake'. They aren't poisonous, we're told later. I also ask about spiders. The only ones you'll meet, Tempi says, are domestic harmless spiders. Other than that, we'll never see spiders in India. I hope he's right.

We disembark for the lime factory, to watch four men in loin cloths pour mussel shells into a furnace lined with coconut shells.

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Later, when we have left, the furnace will reach 1000 degrees and produce a powder, to which they'll add water and get lime for fertilizer, white washing etc.

We get a glimpse of four fishermen, accompanied by their toothless wives and carrying ancient nets, swim across the riverbank and get out the other side, chattering loudly all the way. These people are tribal and totally rural, they look nothing like their city counterparts.

Next we get off at a village to see how coir rope is made from coconut fibre - i'll never vacantly wipe mud off my feet on the welcome mat again - and we buy souvenirs and tapioca crisps and play with the goats. I see my first cocoa pod protruding from a tree bark.

A half hour later, we reach an island where a traditional keralan lunch is served to us on a palm leaf, washed down with a Kingfisher beer, one of our very few tastes of alcohol in India so far. We are transferred to a tiny canoe boat to navigate a few more backlanes of the chocolate brown waters. Villagers pass in their own canoes transporting their wares, fruit, vegetables and coco palm leaves, the women shaded by umbrellas. Every now and then, you see some oarsmen with a mobile phone...these backwaters look isolated, but in parts, you hear the roar of traffic from the main road, and know that the grease and slime and dust of the town is just beyond a line of palms. Still, the flowers are gorgeous and unusual, and flocks of butterfly and at least three different colours of dragonfly are hovering about, and I'm glad to get a break from the clamour and din and fume headaches. 
 
By four we are returned to the bus for a rush hour ride back to our hotel, the stress of which does its best to detract from my serene mood, but I do my best to keep a smile up. There goes India again, it takes you from serenity and beauty to the filthy underbelly of humanity in less than a half hour. It's a test for the emotions and the temper all the time.
 
We dine well back in Fort Cochin, seafood at Malabar Junction, a restaurant attached to a place the guide book calls 'the best boutique hotel in India.' We shouldn't have such champagne tastes on our lemonade money, but it seemed exactly what the doctor ordered. Tiger prawns and three curries with Indian Chenin Blanc, for the price of three nights' accommodation. Just this once...Totally worth it.

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