Messing about in houseboats

Trip Start Nov 01, 2006

179

Trip End Oct 31, 2007

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Where I stayed

Cardamom County Thekkady

(Thekkady hotels)

Flag of India Alleppey, India
Monday, December 25, 2006

After breakfast we packed our stuff and the Twilight Man's Chauffeur (see prev.) drove us to the boat jetty set amoungst lush palms and trickling waterways. Granted, it was the wrong boat jetty, but there was no reason the evil one or his malevolent sidekick should have known that (having merely arranged the whole thing in the first place). Anyway the houseboat (once located - on an entirely different stretch of water), was delightful - not enormous but quite spacious enough for two and newly fitted out. It was also clean. It was also clean. (No, I'm not repeating myself through senility; it's rather that I wish to impress on you the singular rarity of such an occurrence). We were welcomed on board and each given a coconut with a straw in it. After we'd both eaten our straws (this produced an odd look from the crew who seemed to think we were missing the point) we set sail.

Drifting slowly down the backwaters watching simple village life float by was just wonderful; so incredibly relaxing

01 Rach in front of our houseboat

. The Keralan Backwaters are a complex series of canals and waterways stretching for many kilometers between the coast and the mountains. It's become a major tourist attraction to hire a houseboat for a night and, so our Rough Guide tells us, the area forms the backdrop for The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Enough background. Soon after we started off we were served an enormous meal of various delicious vegetable curries, each a Keralan speciality and containing coconut, curry leaves and cardamom as the main flavourings. An afternoon snack of fried battered bananas and sweet tea kept us on until dinner which was again enormous and beautifully prepared and included some simple fried fish.
There was little to do except watch the world go by and read, but that was absolutely fine by us. I managed to crack the last few chapters of Jane Eyre (I never saw that alien invasion ending coming, did you? - what a card that Charlotte Bronte was!), in time for an after dinner gin rummy contest. It was close, but the mosquitos won in the end and we retreated indoors.
The next day we only had a short way to go before returning to Allepey, so we decided to try to get all the way to Kumily (our next planned destination) in one go. A hot but quick bus ride from Alleppey to Kottayam, during which R's suncream bottle decided to leak and paint the inside of her shoulderbag and all the contents a sticky white, followed, and at Kottayam we bailed out of the 32 degree heat with an air-con taxi to take us up the frightening mountain road to the tea and spice plantations of the southern Western Ghats. It was pricey, at 25 squid for the 110km run, but well worth it as we arrived in time to secure a last minute Christmas Eve room at the optimistically named Rolex Tourist Home which, though fine, could more descriptively have been called the Casio Tourist Home. We even had time to book a table at the (much posher) Cardamom County hotel's xmas eve jamboree where we ate 18 different sorts of curry from the buffet, watched traditional Keralan dancing, and both got a teensy weensy bit squiffy. Merry Christmas to us!! (T)