Kollam to Alleppey
Chrissy and I just finished up a fantastic visit to Darjeeling. Our time in India is winding down. We still have some pretty cool days planned though and next stop is Kerala, way down towards the southern tip of India.
After a quick night in Delhi, we take a flight to Trivandrum on a low cost airline called Air Decan. It is pretty low cost, our tickets were hand written for gods sake. The flight is not that full, and Indian folks haven't yet figured out that the exit row is where you want to sit and so with the open seating Chrissy and I score a whole exit row to ourselves. Well, we think we will have it to ourselves. Neither of us sit in the middle seat so that we can take the whole row. Little do with know that with half the plane empty some kid is going to come and sit with us. He is pretty excited to be chit chatting with foreigners. I let Chrissy make the small talk. This guys name in Moon Paul. He is a nice kid, but eventually drives us crazy. Chrissy fakes sleeping to get a break. We can't even shake him after we land and talk to him some more while we wait for our bags. He does offer to give us a ride to where we are headed, which is several hours away. Definitely a nice guy. We don't take him up on the offer (several more hours would be killer) and go our own way. Trivandrum is south of where we need to be so we splurge on a taxi for the three hour ride to Kollam (this was like twenty bucks).
One of the experiences I was really excited about prior to our trip was a boat ride up the south west coast of India. This part of the country is called "Kerala" which means "Gods Own Country" and is the place that our Indian friends back home talked about the most. Think quiet, palm tree lined coast, with an endless series of inland rivers and you will start to get the picture.
The big thing to do in Kerala is to rent a house boat which will take you for a slow trip up the coast through these river ways. This is what I wanted to do, so we had flown down here all the way from Delhi, which is pretty much the length of India.
After a long day of flights and taxi's we roll into Kollam and get a room at an OK but semi-shady hotel. I start the discussion with the hotel desk guy about booking one of these boat trips. He is quoting crazy expensive prices so Chrissy and I tell him to buzz off and go grab some food, then call it a night. We'll book our trip the next morning ourselves at the port.
We get up early and take a motor-rickshaw down to the port. The place is crawling with people wanting to sell you a boat trip. There is an official India tourism booth and we head over there to see what the official line is on a trip. There is a nice guy working the booth and he offers us a decent price on an overnight trip. We walk down to the water to take a look at his boat as well. Not bad, but it is a boat owned by the Indian government. Not quite as plush as I had been hoping for. We tell this dude we may be back and continue shopping. Next guy doesn't have any boats at the port for us to look at. Apparently only government owned boats can dock there. We have to take a rickshaw to look at his boats. Why not. It's only a few minutes ride and this guy pays for it. These boats are nice.
I took this picture after we left of another boat passing us by
The guy wants a hefty price though. We haggle. The boat he is offering has two bedrooms and is brand new (or so he says). His price is too steep even after negotiated discounts and Chrissy and I leave. Back to the port, we talk to another guy but are getting tired and don't want to take any more rickshaws out to look at boats. This is becoming a big pain. Our buddy with the nice boats is scheming with his boss. They can get a smaller, one bedroom boat down from the north to come get us later that afternoon. It is sketchy booking a boat that we haven't seen but what the hell. We throw down a deposit and go back to our hotel to finish packing and get some food. Before we leave I meet the guy who will be our cook and tell him we like fish, meat, and spicy food. He seems happy about the spicy. May be signing up for trouble there.
Fast forward a couple of hours. We have packed, eaten, bought some oranges, gone to an ATM, and sat in the crazy hot sun waiting for them to finish cleaning our boat. All is finally ready and we take another rickshaw out to the boat and toss our stuff aboard.
Our rice boat preparing for departure
The boat is pretty sweet. We have a captain, a cook, and an engine guy. The boat has a covered front deck complete with two lounge chairs for Chrissy and I. We get a private bedroom with a bathroom and shower. Not bad for a boat that was originally designed to carry rice.
Our cook (who's name is Sheba) sits us down in the lounge chairs and serves up some coconut drinks and a fruit plate. Nice. This is more like it.
Ah, nothing beats drinking fruity drinks on a boat
We sit back and relax. The boat pushes off. We have twenty-four hours to do nothing but sit back and watch the riverbank go by. Did I mention our boat also has a cooler? Sheba pulls over a couple of hours down river and I give him beer money. Ice cold Kingfishers it is.
Here is a view of the river from our boat
So this is how we spend the day. Reading, taking pictures of ducks and cranes as they go by. Local children run alongside the boat and yell at us to throw them pens. Sheba brings us tea to our chairs. Evening creeps up on us and we dock the boat for the night in the middle of a wide section of the river. Sheba brings out a feast for dinner. Fried chicken, a chicken curry (which is crazy spicy cause I told him we liked spicy), rice, vegetables, the whole deal. They light lanterns for us to eat by and Sheba keeps coming by to see if we like the food. It is excellent. The view and the sun sets on the water is great. All is well. After dinner Chrissy and I play cards and the captain comes up front to watch. We retire to our room.
Lounging on our rice boat by lantern light
Chrissy and I are both awakened in the middle of the night by a vicious storm. We are talking lightening, wind, and pouring rain. Our boat crew has to buckle down the whole boat. They cover all the windows and the front porch of the boat with tarps. They also fire up the engine and move the boat to a more calm section of the river. I come out of our bedroom to see what is going on, but they indicate that all is well and send me back to bed. Didn't get much sleep that night, but I don't think the boat guys slept at all.
We were moving again when I woke up. I wandered out to my lounge chair and Sheba brought me a cup of tea and then some coffee. Chrissy eventually gets up and we have another great meal for breakfast. Our day goes much as it did the day before. Looking out at the river, reading, and taking pictures. We pull over for lunch and polish off the rest of the beers. Around 2 PM we arrive in Alleppey, which is our destination.
Chrissy and I say our goodbyes to the crew and start trekking from the boat dock towards the bus station. Neither of us is looking forward to a long bus ride. We need to get to Kochi where the plan is to spend a few quiet days and then fly out to Mumbai. A taxi pulls up and offers to take us to Kochi for half the normal fare because he has to go that way anyway. We take him up on it and forgo the crappy bus.
Kochi
We roll into Kochi in our taxi and he makes the required effort to sell us on a hotel where they pay commissions. Thanks but no thanks. Hotels are plentiful and cheap in Kochi. It is the off season. We find a basic but clean place for 7 dollars a night.
Kochi is a scenic coastal town popular with tourists (but not too popular). We are staying in the tourist district, which is called Fort Kochi. Fort Kochi is right on the water and has an abundance of restaurants, hotels, shops, and such. The layout of the city is interesting because it is actually a series of peninsulas and islands. The Fort Kochi part is on an peninsula. There is also Ernakulam on the mainland, the islands of Willington, Bolgatty and Gundu, Mattancherry on the peninsula, and Vypeen Island north of Fort Cochin. The other interesting thing about Kochi is that it has been home to a diverse bunch of people and their influence is all around. At some point Chinese, Jews, Arabs and various Europeans all lived in Kochi. We found out later that there is even one Jewish family still around (they are kind of a celebrity, a rickshaw driver pointed out their house).
I had planned a stop in Kochi as part of our original trip itinerary but couldn't remember why. That's what happens when you plan a year long trip and get deep into it. So we are pleasantly surprised to discover that Kochi has some good sites and is generally a cool place to kick back for a few days. This is what we need to unwind after our whirlwind India tour.
We will spend a total of three nights in Kochi. Here is a quick summary of the highlights:
Kochi - Day One
This is the day we arrived. We got in late afternoon, so didn't have too much time. We did do a quick tour of Fort Kochi, including a walk down by the water where they have Chinese Fishing Nets. These nets are a kind of a crazy mechanical contraption where thin logs are poised over the water using ropes and rocks as counter weights. The logs have nets strung up on them and during high tide the fishermen lower the nets with the ropes and basically scoop the fish out. This must work really well because they were all over the place.
During our walk of the town we found a Catholic Cathedral that was having mass that evening (it was a Sunday). We make a quick stop back at the hotel and then return to the Cathedral for mass. We hadn't gone to church anywhere else in India (the Christians are mostly in the south) and this proved to be an interesting experience. The mass we attended was in English but as with most things it was the little details that really change things. There were quite a few people sitting on the floor for instance. The church also had an abundance of flashy type Christmas lights around statues and such. Probably the most interesting thing though was the music. They had a live music group. These guys had what I think was a slide guitar. They played stuff that sounded country, some jazz, and Chrissy thinks she heard something done to the Coca Cola theme song ("I Like To Teach The World To Sing"). Interesting.
We ate dinner in a mediocre seafood place. The guy served us beers in tea pots to fool the cops because he didn't have a liquor license. We got some decent sleep in our 7 buck a night room. Unfortunately the seven dollars didn't get us air conditioning and it was hot as hell.
Kochi - Day Two
Our hotel had some cheap Internet and we spent a good amount of the day trying to get some blog entries done and other house keeping. Late afternoon we are doing a walk around the local shops and go by a Ayurveda massage place. This is a traditional Indian massage. Chrissy talks me into getting one with her. I won't go into it too much, but lets just say it was not a comfortable experience. Chrissy and I were separated as they only have men masseuses for men and women for women. These wasn't much in the way of modesty. Won't be doing any of that again. I blame Chrissy.
We did manage to find a beer garden type place at some point in our walks of the town and end our day there.
Kochi - Day Three
We have been in town a few days now and had not done much in the way of site seeing. To that end, we hire a rickshaw guy to take us around. This guy drives us all over the place. We saw the old Jewish part of town which had a large cemetery and a Synagogue that doesn't get used much anymore. We also hit up the local spice market which Kochi is famous for. Kochi is a big center for spices and they have all these wholesale places. You can just wander around and look at big burlap bags filled with pepper.
Abundance of spices in Kochi spice town
After the spice market we did some serious shopping. I can't say what we bought because it included some cool stuff for the family. We spent hours picking things out. Was a good haul. One of the best of the trip.
Kochi - Day Four
This is our last day in Kochi. We basically have the morning and then need to head to the airport. We have hired the same driver that took us around the day before to ferry us around again. Due to the size of our purchases we now need to get them all to the local post office for shipping home. This is always tough to do. We got the shops to do most of the packaging for the items we had bought. But even with the things all boxed up you still have much to do. To mail any kind of box in India you have to have it wrapped in cloth and sealed with wax. This actually requires a trip to a tailor. Its kind of nuts but looks really cool when it is all done.
Our goods getting wrapped at the tailors
Our last stop on the way to the airport is actually one of the biggest sites in Kochi, the St. Francis Church. The church was built in 1503 by Portuguese Franciscan friars, and is India's oldest European built church.
St. Francis Church
We get to the airport after a long ride in the rickshaw. We should have just taken a cab because it is only a little bit more than the motor rickshaws but we wanted to give our guy the cash. Anyway, Kochi was a good stop. Our India tour is almost over. We are flying out to Mumbai, staying there a few days and then leaving for Australia.
- Bill