Canal probe

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The owner of the boat picked me up from the hotel in an auto mid-morning, and we proceeded to where the boat was moored. Its name is the Sea Kerala, and pretty much the length of it is covered except for an area near the prow where the driver/pilot sits, with window and doorway holes at regular intervals. The bedroom is a snug fit, and the bathroom is better than many I've had in land-based hotels. Electricity is produced via solar panels.

The sitting area is forward of the bedroom and consists of a table and 2 chairs both facing the prow, plus a couple of couches that constitute the crew's beds.

After being presented with a lei-style floral necklace, made of some flowers with a strong but pleasant aroma, as well as a coconut (filled, predictably, with coconut water), I was introduced to the crew. The captain is Chandreh, though his role seemed to be interchangeable with that of the engineer, whose name is Aji. The chef, a much younger chap than the other 2, is Sriji.

Without any further ado, we cast off and headed into the backwaters. The boat is powered by a motor, meaning you don't quite get the sound of the water lapping against the hull, but it's not too intrusive. Warnings to other river users are issued via a hand-squeezed horn, much the same as you'd find on a vintage car. The size of the boat precludes it from going down any of the really narrow channels, but there are plenty of lagoons and canals to putter slowly through. There are clusters of houses, huddled together in small villages, with people bathing or doing laundry in the shallows. Trees and bushes line the banks, with birds flying low over the water. If you're lucky, you'll spot a bright blue kingfisher, often perched on top of one of the poles signifying shallow water, but the ones I saw seemed very skittish and flew off before I could get any close-up photos. Other river vessels, be they tourists on similar trips or locals in 1-man canoes or river taxis constantly plying a route between opposite banks, create gentle swells in the water. It appears to be standard practice to wave at any passing craft, which I joined in with whole-heartedly as I felt slightly guilty sitting expending no energy whatsoever.

Every so often, you'll be surprised to see a large building rising out of the palm trees. The most common ones seemed to be churches or schools, the pinks and yellows of their paintwork a lively contrast to the green of their surroundings and the blueness of the cloudless sky.

The first real action of the day occurred as we were pulling up to the bank in order to have lunch. The captain was manoeuvring the boat into position using a bamboo pole. Just as he was applying some firm pressure to it, it decided to snap, unbalancing him irretrievably and sending him in cartoon windmilling fashion into the canal. I was concerned, as the guy is no spring chicken and had fallen into the narrowing gap between the boat and the bank, but he soon surfaced laughing jovially, and the joshing he received from the rest of the crew made me realise the incident wasn't all that serious.

Lunch seemed to have been cooked for 2 people (maybe it had, as normally groups of 2 people hire these boats). 1 fish dish and 4 veg dishes, plus rice and papadums, was more than I could have coped with even with my appetite at its heartiest (which it wasn't, due to the heat), but I stuffed away as much as I could, then put in a request for dinner to be half the size.

After our 2 hour lunch break, further cruising ensued. We stopped at a boat club that had had recent success in the Nehru Snake Boat trophy, a competition staged in Allepey each August amongst local snake boats. The snake boats are so called because they are long and thin, i.e. 130 feet long, with 105 rowers, 5 steerers, and 11 tuners (couldn't quite figure out if the tuners were balancing the boat or keeping all the rowers in time). We also stopped off at a large church, which was interesting in its own right but had a suspiciously out-of-place bunch of spice shops nearby.

We stopped for the day in the early evening, beside a large field fringed with palm trees - clearly a popular parking spot as there were at least 5 other boats there. Music came drifting over from what looked like a drab church on the other side of the field. At first I thought it was a Bollywood soundtrack but then I started hearing a few "Hallelujah"s, and the chef confirmed that it was indeed religious music. After nightfall, the church suddenly started sporting a red neon cross on its roof, with shimmering green and yellow lights adorning its exterior walls, like some Vegas wedding chapel transported to the subcontinent, and the music took on a more obviously Christian tenor.

As requested, dinner was a lot smaller than lunch had been but it was still a struggle to get through it, as I suppose in this heat my appetite is a shadow of its normal self. Initially the chef put on the overhead light above the table, but this attracted such a cloud of insects (and geckos - one of which fell off the ceiling onto my back) that he soon turned it off and lit 2 candles instead, adding the occasional crackle of frying moth to the sounds of the night.

Bedtime was 9PM, as there wasn't much else to do and the crew were clearly interested in hitting the sack early. On deck there was an occasional breeze, but in my room it was very stuffy so I tried to turn up the speed of the fan. Coincidentally all the lights then went off. Since I was naked at the time, I didn't fancy waltzing out of my room and asking what had happened, but the lights came back on a few minutes later, and I found out the next day that I'd tripped the power and it had had to be reset. While fumbling around in the dark, I managed to give the 3rd toe on my left foot a damn good stubbing on a protruding part of the cabin wall. I predict some severe bruising.

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Photos

Paddle your own canoe
Albeit a very large one