Floating palaces and destroyed forts

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Besides our flight in and flight out, our little Indian holiday has been a bit like a choose your own adventure story. If we hear of somewhere that is interesting, read about somewhere beautiful, the only thing stopping us from going there is an ever shrinking bank account. There was one big budget item that we had planned on forking out for and by luck we saved a bunch of cash and had a couple of our most enjoyable days since leaving home doing so.

A couple of months prior to leaving we were at the farewell party of a friend from Sydney, Cyra, who was heading back to London for what felt like the 25th time since we have known her. At some point over the course of a very loose evening we got talking to Cyra and her boyfriend George about our upcoming trip to the sub-continent. It turned out that they would be heading to India around the same time so we agreed to keep in contact in the event that we could meet up at some point whilst over here. We kept up communication over the course of the next few months and a facebook message on Australia day locked in a backwater cruise with the two of them in late February. We had heard how beautiful the backwaters are and while hiring a houseboat would cost an arm and a leg, it was something that we just had to work into our budget.

Saying goodbye to Varkala with one final big night at the Rock'n'Roll cafe, the following mornings train ride proved to be a lot less comfortable than our routine of sleeping until 11. We found a couple of seats and space for our bags in the sleeper section, happily settling in to a game of cards only to be booted from the seats half a game later. Yet another public transport lesson learnt, while there may be seats available don't ever get comfortable on a sleeper train if you aren't in for the long haul as even the nicest looking old Indian gentleman can turn if he thinks you are in his allocated seat.

We arrived in Allepey to the greetings of a bunch of rickshaw drivers vying for our business and were soon on our way towards a guest house. We have been trying to keep our nightly budget for a room to around 300 rupees and in Allepey that buys you a room in what felt like either a retired hospital or haunted house. The long spooky hallways of the guest hose were accompanied by a bathroom which would easily accommodate a wheelchair with fittings on the roof which we assumed was for a hoist and if you open the creaking front gate you see not one but 3 coffin shops. This guest house had easily the most character of any of our previous hotels and we made it through the one night there without a visit from the poltergeist.

We spoke with Cyra and George soon after arriving and planned to meet up a couple of hours later to go in search of a houseboat for the following day. As the pair of them had been travelling for close to 24 hours to meet with us, we told them to call us a couple of hours later after they had showered and fit in a quick siesta. The hours ticked by and we assumed that they had passed, so we patiently waited, waited and waited until it was getting close to too late to look for a houseboat. I gave a call from our Indian mobile number only to find out that our friends were not able to get through to us on our our phone all afternoon due to issues with our network. You can't really ever count on anything working in this place not even phones using a multinational companies SIM card.

We spent the rest of the afternoon with George and Cyra inspecting houseboats that ranged from rather expensive death traps to ultra expensive floating palaces and eventually negotiated an alright deal on a very cosy boat. After paying our deposit we caught up over a drink and dinner all the while planning for the next day. We woke early the next morning and went shopping for rations (booze) then hastily made our way to the jetty for our 11 am launch.

The cruise was promised to be 23 hours of endless beauty with all meals, smiles and mosquitoes thrown in for free but as midday ticked over we were already being cut short on how much we would be seeing. Finally leaving the wharf a little after 12 we found out exactly why this tourist attraction is high on the agenda of every person passing through Kerala. The constant noise, pollution and rancid smells of this wonderful country are moved to the back of your mind as you witness kilometre upon kilometre of untainted, still and beautiful waterways. Besides the occasional passing-by of another decadent floating mansion the silence of the backwaters is so deafening that we could have easily forgotten that we are just backpackers and not Keralan royalty. The rest of the evening was spent enjoying the company of our fellow cruisers, drinking too much Honey Bee Brandy, Apple Vodka and Kingfisher Lager and soaking up the surroundings.

Breakfast came and quickly went and it became evident that our trip was coming to a close as we joined the peak hour traffic of hundreds of houseboats making their way back to Allepey to prepare for their next bunch of passengers. Surprisingly one of the things that I have come to love about India is that nothing really ever meets what is advertised. It is not unusual for sightseeing tours to cut out one or more of the main sights, 15 kilometre rickshaw rides at ridiculous prices to be not more than a 1 kilometre journey, so when our 23 hour cruise was reduced to 20 we couldn't do much but laugh.

With the already completed backwaters cruise the only thing set in our itinerary we disembarked from our vessel unsure of what to do next. We had such a great time hanging out with Cyra and George that a couple of option presented themselves. One was to jump back on a train to Varkala and spend another 3 more days in a familiar environment with familiar people, once again drinking too much, sitting on a beach and eating some decent food (Check out Hungry Eye Cafe on the cliff face at Varkala if you want a decent Pizza, Thai meal or Tandoori Chicken. So far it has given us the best western food in all of India). Before we could even get started on thinking up a second option we were back in a auto-rickshaw on our way to the train station which was no small feat when you have 4 people, 4 backpacks, 4 daypacks and a guitar.

We pulled up at the station a short while later and I jumped out to find out train times and purchase tickets, joining a line of about 15 metres. The line moved slowly, and I mean very damn slowly until I reached 2 positions from the counter when a broad shoulders, balding man with a moustache that appeared to prop up his cheek bones entered the reservation office. This large and animated man shouted a few lines in Malayalam to which service of the expectant customers ceased as the entire office undertook what appeared to be an audit. Just as slowly as the staff worked through the long line of waiting customers, they counted every Rupee in every till until they had reached their grand total to which the moustached man put a wad of 500 Rupee notes in his pocket and left the building. Service resumed and another 10 minutes later I made it to the front only to be told that they were unable to help me from that particular desk as it was for advance reservations only. Even City Rail would have put up a sign to inform their customers this. It did take 40 minutes but another lesson was learned; don't wait to patiently to be served, push to the front and cut in line, be rude just like the locals do and maybe just maybe you will get served in good time.

There isn't all that much to say about our return trip to Varkala as it was just as before with a couple of different faces thrown in. We had a brilliant time there once again, eating and drinking at our favourite hangouts, getting incredibly sunburnt, exploring some of the surrounding beaches and really just chilling with mates. Cyra and George were heading north to Kochi airport to fly out to Dehli on the Monday, so we joined them on the train to Ernakulam saying goodbye as we jumped off the train.

I didn't know all that much about Fort Cochin other than it being settled by the Dutch, Portuguese and the English at different points over the last few hundred years. I imagined for some unknown reason that there would be cobbled stone roads with grand walls around the island, with openings for fishermen to deliver their daily catch to the local markets. It was an image that had no real substance but with a name like Fort Cochin it did breathe an air of fantasy. The day that we went exploring was sweltering hot and apart from the 20 refreshing minutes on a ferry each way from Ernakulam I don't believe I have ever felt so hot in my life. We walked around the town looking for traces of my dreamed up Fort Cochin and thought the best place to get a real in-depth understanding of the area would be the Indo-Portuguese museum only a half hour walk from the ferry terminal. Dripping with sweat we arrived at the museum to be shown the last remnants of the actual fort, a five metre long by one metre wide column of stone. My dreams of a medieval castle on the beautiful Keralan coast quashed.

Fort Cochin is a tourist stop for many travellers passing through Kerala and I just didn't get it. Besides watching Indian fishermen use traditional Chinese fishing nets, the fort offered little more than opportunity to visit a few churches which have all been rebuilt from their original form anyway. By reasoning of convenience we stayed in Ernakulam as we knew it would be much easier to get transport out of there than the fort and we were glad for it. Ernakalum offered fantastic eating for little to no money and had a much more hectic vibe than its more favoured and much more expensive brother Fort Cochin. Eating strange food from street vendors, seeing the multiple award winning movie Slum Dog Millionaire in a cinema full of clapping and cheering locals and eating a meal in a shopping centre food court to the sound track of a Hardstyle (techno music) record being played over the loudspeakers made us loving India all the more for just being so damn different.

We had only travelled through two states to this point but we are both sold on India so much that we decided that we would have to extend our stay for a few more weeks. Why rush ourselves when life at the moment is so much fun? London is still bloody cold by all reports so it will have to wait until mid April.

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Comments

[Steph]

i think u guys are due for an update!