The Backwaters of Kerala

The Keralan backwaters are everything that people had described them as, beautiful, tropical and very photogenic. As with all of India, people do almost everything in the water; whether it be washing themselves, clean dishes or just general milling around.

My backwater trip started in the town of Kollam, Ewen's recommendation of a hotel was sadly fully booked with meant staying overnight into a hotel sandwiched between the 2 mosques of the town. This meant I was awoken by strange religious sounds coming from both mosques at 5am, I'm told that this is the call for Muslims to go and prey. The trip in Kollam was a trip into a backwater village and was wonderful. I was in a canoe with a girl from Newcastle and an old chap from Canada with the hairiest back in history. The highlights of the trip included having a coconut directly from the tree and a visit to a rope making factory (actually that part was turd). Sadly Kollam as a town was a bit of a dive so the lass from Newcastle and I decided to take a bus to Alleppey which is further North up the backwaters.

Alleppey was far nicer a town and was exactly the sort of picturesque backwater town that I had imagined, I was immediately accosted at the bus station and led back to a nice homestay just by the post office. Apologies Mum&Dad you may received your postcard from Goa in a couple of weeks ... The backwater trip from Alleppey was the typical backwater experience, saw lots of house boats out of the water which can be rented overnight for about 7000R, so just over 100GBP. Sadly this is slightly out of my price range, and in any case is the sort of thing you would want to do with a partner/couple of mates. Instead Becca and I booked a paddle canoe for 4 hours to explore the backwaters on, the views of the water were amazing and we saw lots of paddy fields, plenty of salesmen on water and kids fishing in a little boat. The main highlight however was my new found skill of climbing palm trees, oh yes... and I have pictures to prove this, which I will happily post next week, most probably Thursday/Friday.

However worrying whilst in Alleppey after deciding to wear my new 'gun show' wife beater vests I was taken down a side alley by an Indian man who assured me that the internet was this way, before he proceeded to kiss my arm and hands before I ran off very scared.

Currently I am up in the hills of Kumily and planning an assault on the Periyar Wildlife Park tomorrow, I have an all-day trek booked up and planning to do some Elephant riding later today! Hope everyone is well and not feeling the cold too much.

x

written by  Michael Russell on February 6, 2009 from Alleppey, India
from the travel blog: Escape from Blighty
tagged Backwaters, Alleppey and Kollam
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