And so…yet another wonderful day, full of experiences….Alleppey as a town is a dump, literally, but within ten minutes by boat the backwaters embrace me, with cool breezes, stunning rice paddies, shore villages lined with locals fishing, washing, chatting, canoes draining the silt (taking it ashore for fodder for the animals as well as keeping the canals clear)..Kingfishers dart among the reeds, flowers of every colour line the banks….
I wandered early into the Indian coffee house for my ‘usual’ breakfast-tis amazing how within 2 days in every town a schedule/routine appears…and got chatting to a French Canadian couple, about my age….within half an hour we’d been persuaded into a 4 hour boat trip for 500 rupees each.
So off we went, sitting under a bamboo canopy, past the crowded rice boats and ferries leaving the jetties and into the backwaters. At first we covered similar ‘paths’ to yesterday’s public boat, but soon we were under the narrow bridge and into the smaller canals, drifting along watching the backwater life.
It is as beautiful as a postcard, just as I imagined before I left England, and certainly has not disappointed, lush, diverse greens, paddy fields, full of surprises-banks lined with more ducks then I’ve seen gathered together in England, Hindu temples, village convent schools… (Far more Hindu here, still many Christians, and apparently less Muslims, though the mosques wake me up every morning at dawn so there must be plenty of them).
We stopped in a tiny village to buy water and the inevitable crisps (curry flavour), and a local kindly offered to allow Gabrielle and I to use his washroom. The house was another surprise, spotless, tiled throughout, just a hall with three rooms’ off-in one the tiny baby was sleeping under the fan, in another the grandmother slept too…and a splendid western bathroom! The owners were very proud of their house…apparently he manages a gym in Saudi Arabia via online business, so has money by Kerala standards.
The couple swam in the lake, though not for me…the snakes are notorious, and I’m A) not that brave and B) didn’t have a cossie….
Returned reluctantly to a late lunch at the usual place (see above),before returning for a cold shower, and a long walk along the beach as the sun was setting….
India is a magical place…yet even today, as I stared at the reddening sky and the stars above the palm trees, I had to jump over birds feasting on the bones of decaying animals…I’m learning to accept that for every high there is always a low, but the heights as well as the depths as phenomenal.
I wandered early into the Indian coffee house for my ‘usual’ breakfast-tis amazing how within 2 days in every town a schedule/routine appears…and got chatting to a French Canadian couple, about my age….within half an hour we’d been persuaded into a 4 hour boat trip for 500 rupees each.
It is as beautiful as a postcard, just as I imagined before I left England, and certainly has not disappointed, lush, diverse greens, paddy fields, full of surprises-banks lined with more ducks then I’ve seen gathered together in England, Hindu temples, village convent schools… (Far more Hindu here, still many Christians, and apparently less Muslims, though the mosques wake me up every morning at dawn so there must be plenty of them).
The couple swam in the lake, though not for me…the snakes are notorious, and I’m A) not that brave and B) didn’t have a cossie….
Returned reluctantly to a late lunch at the usual place (see above),before returning for a cold shower, and a long walk along the beach as the sun was setting….
India is a magical place…yet even today, as I stared at the reddening sky and the stars above the palm trees, I had to jump over birds feasting on the bones of decaying animals…I’m learning to accept that for every high there is always a low, but the heights as well as the depths as phenomenal.
No comments:
Post a Comment