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Published: January 6th 2007
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Backwaters
Sitting on our houseboat, just starting off on our trip. Got to Alleppey in a timely manner, and got on our houseboat a little after noon. I was really excited as we got out of the car, and walked passed boats, wondering which one was ours. It's small, but enough for us. There were some huge ones out there (like mansions on water). Ours had 2 lounge chairs, a small table and chairs, our little bedroom and bathroom. To get to the kitchen you had to go around the outside of the boat. Some of the huge ones were double-decker, and could hold up to 10 people or so. We had 3 people on board for just the two of us...a guy at the front to steer, a rear propeller guy, and a cook.
The backwaters are incredible. It's just so beautiful everywhere. It's warm, but you get a little bit of a cool breeze while moving around the water. All we did was sit and enjoy the view and eat. About 1:30p we docked at a random place, and got served lunch. We got a lot of different dishes on rice and fresh fried fish, served on banana leaves. We also got fresh Toddy (coconut 'beer' -- fermented
Backwaters
The construction of bigger houseboats! coconut sap). One of the guys went into the local village and got us a liter for 50 rupees. It was incredibly sweet and had just a hint of carbonation. It was really good 😊
In the afternoon we stopped off at a village and walked to their church (Adam was talking to one of our guys about it seeming like there was a bigger christian population in southern India, and I think he understood it as us wanting to see a church!). It was nice to stretch out legs for a bit and walk. These adorable little girls came up to us, gave us a flower they had been picking and asked for pens (I had no idea that children wanted pens for schooling or I would have brought way more than I did to give them away), but we didn't have any. They saw our camera, and asked us to take pictures of them. It was heart-warming. After a few minutes we kept walking. We got to walk past paddy fields, and we started to hear the rumbling of thunder. It became really humid and warm out.
After seeing the church we walked back to the
boat, and continued on our ride. We got served tea and snacks (a kind of fried onion ball. It tasted a lot like latkes to me!). They were excellent though. The sun started to set, but there were a lot of stormy-looking clouds in the way. But the colors we saw were nice regardless. We parked for the evening, and Adam and I watched the sky light up with lightning (though no thunder could be heard anymore) as well as fireflies. It was really cool and fun. Adam had never seen lightning bugs before. Also there were bats flying around close to our boat. It was exciting (I love seeing bats). We got served a delicious (and filling) dinner, and we got told about folding our banana leaves in the proper manner to express if we liked the food or didn't.
We stayed up for awhile outside, and then headed into our room to get ready for bed. It was super warm in our room...we turned on our ghetto-little fan and waited for sleep to come to us.
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