Day 96 - Alleppey, Kerala, India

Day 96 – Hers.

 

We were up at 5 for a 5:30 start.  A quick journey by tuk tuk to the train station had us there in plenty of time for the 6:30 train from Varkala to Alleppey.  We had seats this time – very comfortable, if a bit cold from the air conditioning.  After our splurges in Varkala, many of us needed to stop at an ATM before arriving at our home stay village.  The machines weren’t working at either train station – so we had to stop in Alleppey on the way to our breakfast buffet.  Of course, our tuk tuk driver didn’t stop – so Rob had to go back into town.  Apparently the first three machines in town weren’t working either – eventually the fourth machine allowed him to withdraw enough money to get us through the last five days of our India trip.....whew!  We could always change dollars – but presumably finding a place to do that would be even more of a challenge.

Our guide, Dennis, had told us that lunch would be at our homestay – so Rob and I just had coffee at the 10:00 stop.  I didn’t want to be rude and refuse our homestay family’s hospitality because I had just filled up on breakfast – however nice it looked.

We waited at the restaurant a bit while several of our group went to negotiate a houseboat tour of the canals for tomorrow.  They seem to have done an admirable job – getting over 300 rupees each off the original price we had been quoted.  A houseboat tour is the main thing to do here – we have also been offered fishing and cricket.....it’s a quiet but beautiful place.

Our homestay families live about an hour by boat from Alleppey.  We took a motor cruiser past brightly coloured houses, temples and Christian churches, coconut palms, tropical flowers and concrete ferry docks along the shore, passing a variety of houseboats, fishing canoes and motor craft – as well as water hyacinths and the odd egret or cormorant – even a bright blur kingfisher sunning himself on an electricity wire across the river.  In many ways, it was quite reminiscent of the Mekong delta – but cleaner and more prosperous looking.  Apparently there are turtles, crocodiles and eels, catfish and other fish that didn’t sound familiar.

We arrived and settled into our home for two nights – it is a lovely place, right on the river, that has been in our host’s family for several generations. (Apparently it’s sinking – our host father, Matthew,  told us that you had to go up 4 steps to get in when he was a child and now it’s just 1) Matthew showed us his rice paddies and fruit trees, and his little canoe – over a hundred years old – hollowed out from one tree, and his neighbour’s – made from split logs, bound together with coir rope and fibre, waterproofed annually with fish oil.

Lunch was fantastic – a coconut curry fish dish with three different vegetable dishes (One was cabbage and coconut, not ingredients one would immediately think of combining, but delicious all the same), home grown rice and home grown bananas.  We just chilled for an hour after lunch before joining the rest of the group for a boat tour of the local village.

 

Day 96 – His.

The afternoon boat tour was pretty much a repeat of our arrival here, but pretty cool for all that. The boat was smaller and not fancying the cramped sweaty cabin a few of us sat on the roof to watch the riverbanks slide past. This is a quiet undisturbed part of the country and a very pleasant place to spend a bit of time. Not a lot of tourists make it here so we are something of an oddity but it is one of the oldest Christian communities in India being first a Portuguese colony and then French and finally British. The church here is over a thousand years old – though recently rebuilt and here is one of the few places you can eat beef without feeling guilty. All in all Alleppey has a quiet rural charm that really shows off the beauty of southern India.

After the boat trip we walked around the village and back to our host family’s house where their daughter showed us card tricks and taught us card games until the dinner was ready. Dinner was an egg curry – one of the girls in our group liked it so much she had 3 eggs and contemplated a fourth. Mostly because of our early start we are tired and pretty much after dinner we went to bed. At least we won’t have such an early start tomorrow.