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Published: November 17th 2008
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Backwaters/ Kerala
One of the places I liked most in India!
Most of the travellers in Kerala want to stay for some days on a houseboat - driving through the backwaters (water channels that were built because of a tsunami hundreds of years ago). I didn’t do so because first it’s quite expensive compared to what I did and furthermore just too touristy for my taste!
Luckily the guidebooks also mention home stays in the middle of nowhere, quite far away from the main touristy villages. So I called them several times - telling them the price I’m willing to pay - so the guy phoned some friends and told me how I would find that place. So in Allepey/ Allapuzha I searched the governmental boat (transport medium) that would bring me there - a 2 hours Backwater tour for 10 Cents! Great! Travelling with locals, talking to them on the boat or just watching the passing countryside without being asked to buy whatever - I love it!
I was the only guest in my home stay - located right on the bank of one of the not touristy backwaters - and the family was so lovely!
Alleppey/ Alapuzzha
Boat station - searching the correct boat... I felt like another daughter, cooked with the mother (made one Italian dish with me; I still had some oregano with me from the stay in the mountains of Northern India), went fishing with the daughter and the father, also put me some typical clothes on the Kerala Birthday Day etc. - but still I stayed in a small house next to theirs - quiet and with a view on coconut trees and pure, deeply green countryside - so I read 2 book there in 4 days! I’m really happy about that! They just accepted that I don’t want to join tours or buy things or having massages etc. - I just wanted to relax! That place was just predestined for doing so! Relaxing, reading, cooking, sleeping, talking, taking a walk along the backwaters…
The last day of my stay in my “Kerala family” I was asked by them to join them in a family meeting - what a question! We went 30 km with a rickshaw to the house of the mother’s family. As it was the Birthday of the area Kerala (independence) most of the brothers of the mother came to their birth house: one with his
whole family from London, other ones from Kuwait. So the mother is now alone at home since her husband died a few months ago - since then A 15 years old boy from the neighbourhood sleeps in her house every night so she is not that alone! Wow! INCREDIBLE INDIA! It was so interesting to talk to them! Another family is staying in Saudi-Arabia; as that’s up to them the most traditional and strict country women there have to work the burka and aren’t living in a Western, modern way at all - so their daughter is living with “my” Kerala family since she’s been 12 years old - she meets her parents every two years… the next time they come they’ll look for a husband for her (she’s 26 years old, finished her studies and is already working). She and the 16 years old daughters told me their parents are going to look for a son in law in the same cast, proposing him to the girls - then it’s up to them if they want to marry him. We went all together to a church - there was very loud music from the speakers and it was incredible
Alleppey/ Alapuzzha
doing homework on the boat crowded, everybody wanted to pray to the priest that used to be there years ago. Because of the Independent day of Kerala around the church there were lots of booths selling sweets, religious products, trash/ kitsch - most of it for children. The family bought me a “silver” crown - so sweet!
The small house was very new, had Western standard bathroom. But I had a fight at night with a spider… better said a fight with myself what to do… 😊 Finally I bring myself to put her inside of my mosquito net (she was inside of it) and to fix a hair tie around it - hoping she wouldn’t escape… I was lucky so my home stay “sisters” put her outside of my room the next day. I didn’t open the windows anymore…
Walking around I was asked for coins, chocolate, pens or taking photos of them - and in a very kind way; the poorest kids in the village where I stayed are living in the countryside so at least they have enough to eat, water and a place to stay - most of them also go to school.
I was surprised that there’re
Near Alleppey/ Alapuzzha
famous Backwaters of Kerala - made by a Tsunami 800 year ago not only Catholic Christians (because it was a Portuguese colony) - the uncle of the children is priest - but at the same time married and with children.
One day “all-inclusive” in a family home stay (food, accommodation, joining the daily life of an Indian family) costs the same as I sometimes pay for one rum with coke in BCN (11 Euros) - with the view on palm trees next to my window!
Rice cultivation: I didn´t know until than that rice grows like wheat. But before they flood the area to dung the soil.
Less cows in the streets of Kerala… maybe because Christians are allowed to eat them… just an idea.
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