Kerala Backwaters

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We weren't sure how to tackle exploring the Kerala backwaters. The western side of the state is a maze of waterways. We had already seen some of this on our canoe trip the prévious day and it seemed lots of people hired a houseboat to explore a part of the large area.

The center of the houseboat business was a town a bit further north called Alleppay. We opted to take the 6 hour ferry trip to this town which would give us a taste for the area.

As expected the ferry was 'rustic' with minimal facilities but proved to be bearable. There was an option of sitting inside the cabin below decks or find space on the roof where there were a few chairs which had already been grabbed by those foreign tourists clever enough to get there early. We grabbed a spot down the back with a group of five chaps from Uttar Pradesh who were on a week pilgrimage. After a short conversation about how many children, great NZ and Indian cricket players the group decdied it was time to open the bottle of brandy they bought for the trip. I joined them for a polite small glass. After they had finished the bottle they then slept for large part of the trip.

Shelley managed to source a chair after a few people got off at one of the three stops we made. I managed to get some sleep on the deck, we had got good at sleeping on hard objects due to our previous hotel beds.

The trip was spectacular crossing two lakes and cruising up small and large canals including a point where the canals opened out to the sea.

We arrived in Alleppe just after dark. We could see that the house boat business was big with hundreds of boats for hire. We decided that we had seen enough on our trip that we wouldn't hire a boat but keep heading further north the next day. We were looking forward to some beach time and had a few more k's to cover to a place I had read about.

We stayed in a very basic home stay with yet another hard mattress. New travel rule was created that night..we wouldn't book any more accomodation unless the pictures on the booking site looked like good thick mattresses.

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