I sit admiring the beautiful view but also my fingernails. It seems coming to India may have been the ultimate cure for breaking my horrible habit! (You don't want to bite your nails here - you may as well lick your flip flops).
Today is the day we will hire a houseboat to take us on a cruise along the beautiful and famed Keralan backwaters where will stay on board our vessel overnight.
We checkout and grab a Rickshaw to take us to 'Finishing Point' where we know the houseboats sit floating, waiting patiently to welcome their next guests.
We are willing to pay 5000 rupees for a boat for one night however 7000 seems to be the going rate. We are taken aboard one boat, and then another and another. All have varying levels of comfort however all seem to be converted rice barges and share a similar layout comprising of lounge area at the front complete with seating area and dining table, bedrooms on the lower tier with kitchen and staff quarters at the back. On the upper deck there is a sunbathing area and the boat is all hung together with a thatched roof, woven sides and a wooden shell. Some are immaculate and the ones in our price bracket need some TLC yet are still shabbily chic.
We meet a couple of French Canadian girls, also travelling around, and looking for an overnight cruise. Together we find a two bedroomed boat and negotiate that we will pay 9500 rupees (2500 each). We have a captain, chef and general helper on board as a dedicated crew and before long we set sail with our new friends Sofie and Vicky.
The glassy green waterways are wide and meandering with palm trees, banana trees and mango trees generously lining the waters edge. There are many other boats on the water and their inhabitants wave to us. We enjoy a freshly prepared lunch of marinated and fried whole fish drizzled with fresh lime juice (the best fish I've ever tasted) and various other delicious accompaniments including poppadums, curd, curried cabbage and salad. Our afternoon is spent reading, napping and lounging. People bathe, launder their clothes and bash them dry against stones on the banks - the beating sound travels loudly over the water. 100,000 people live here and most are employed by the boating or agricultural trade.
Sofie and Vicky have been on a different route around India and tell us about their experiences in Calcutta (Kolkata) and Varanasi. Having been recommended to also visit Varanasi by an old college friend (Helen) and visit the burning ghats and the Ganges - I'm thinking another trip to India in the future will have to happen as I haven't been able to see it all! The stories of watching the funeral ceremonies in Varanasi, cremations, everything visible, the smell of sandalwood burning and solemness seems to have got under the skin of our boat mates. In the western world, death is our unspoken destiny and a truth we choose to avoid or ignore. In India it is part of your everyday life. How you conduct yourself in this life will affect your next one and the end is purely the beginning of your next adventure therefore people have a much less affected way of viewing this right of passage.
After some wine, beer and another delicious freshly cooked meal (Sofie and Vicky had bought some fresh tiger prawns and crabs from a side market earlier and the chef had lovingly served these with dinner) we retire to bed.
The walls on the boat are paper thin and before long we can hear a blood curdling scream from the other room. A cockroach, a decent size and much bigger than my friend on the train, is in their loo. One of the staff come heroically armed with spray and the cockroach has an unfortunate funeral firstly being sprayed and then thrown overboard. Erin quickly discovers another cockroach - this time in our bathroom. Again the man comes with the spray, this time the cockroach in question decides to make a run for it to the warm high ground under the man's Dhoti. (Men in Southern India wear this loin cloth type piece of material on their lower halves I assume to keep cool!). The man promptly jumps up and down, let's out a squeal. and we next next hear the spray of the aerosol and he comes out holding the dead insect triumphantly. The cockroach joins his friend swimming with the fishes. I like the idea that they must have been horrible people in their previous life...
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