Oct 25 – House boating

Today we left the Windermere Resort with Julie riding shotgun in the front for a fun filled 4+ hours back to Cochin. We were running a little behind schedule, so the ride was faster and the streets were more crowded then when we arrived. These conditions only magnified the “fun” Julie had in the front seat as we careened down the narrow, curvy mountain roads. Needless to say, she did not have a nap on the return to Cochin.

Ice Cream Store on Dike Between Lake and Rice Fields

Alleppey is about 50K south of Cochin and located on a very large lake that starts in Cochin and ends south of Alleppey. This lake has been divided into a number of large rice fields. I say fields because they are several magnitudes larger than any rice paddy that I have ever seen. The rice fields have been created by building dikes around each field and then uses a system of pumps that allows the fields to be flooded from the lake and 3 months later drained by pumping the water back into the lake and the rice is planted. The people in the area live on the top of the dike between the lake and the rice fields. That dike is about 25 feet wide and the locals have built houses, stores, foot paths and graze their livestock in the 25 feet living area that runs around each rice field.



House Boat at Alleppey

We boarded the house boat and set off for a 2+ hour cruse through the lake and canals. The boat was on the rustic side, but the crew was friendly and helpful. We stopped at a canal side fish market, and purchased giant prawns for our dinner. Four of these prawns weighted about a pound.

Prawns

At the end of a day, we tied up to a tree for the night. We had a couple of hours to kill before dinner and I inquired if there might any beer or wine available. Most of the people in this area are Hindu and don’t drink alcohol. The crew was willing to go buy beer or wine for us, but it would take a walk and a taxi to the store all of which sounded like more effort that it was worth, and we decided to go for a walk instead. A little while later one of the crew called Julie to watch as one of the locals climbed up a coconut tree to retrieve a pot from the top of the tree, and replaced it with another pot after shaving off then end of one of the branches. The pots are used to catch the coconut sap that drains from the shaved end of the branch. Shortly after Julie watched this changing of the pots and we had both returned to the boat, the captain walked up and handed me a glass of milky colored liquid and told me it was coconut beer. Come to find out the coconut sap that is going into the pots is fermented and used as coconut beer by the locals. The coconut beer I had was warm but OK. I think if one could chill it down to a good lager temperature it would make a pretty good substitute for a bud at least in this part of the world.

After the coconut beer we relaxed on the bow of the boat and watched as darkness set in across the lake. We were enjoying the serenity of the moment, when a bat flew through the boat. This bat was not content to just make a pass through the open parts of the boat, but decided to check out the hallway and all of the bedrooms. After making several passes into the boat, we put down the canvas curtains, had dinner and retired.

We had an early start in the morning with a light breakfast in order to return to the dock by 9:30 AM. The trip through the canals was interesting as we watched the area wake up and get the day started People bathing and washing clothes in the lake, men is clean white shirts with their laptops getting into their small boats to get to the mainland and to work, and children all boarding the “school boat” heading off to school. We arrived at the dock and headed for Cochin to catch our flight back to Chennai.