We bid a reluctant farewell to Fort Kochi and drove a couple of hours south to Alleppey. “It is the Venice of the East” they said, “The serene charm of Alleppey can be seen during a backwater cruise.” What they didn’t mention is that the actual ‘town’ is far from serene, it’s manic! Not quite the chaos we’ve seen in north India but the amount of traffic and more to the point, the way they drove confirmed immediately that, sadly I would refuse to go to Munnar.
Munnar is a four to five hour drive up precarious mountain roads through tea plantations (we’ve already been to one of those in Malaysia) and spice farms (mmmmmm that is hurting a bit as I would love to have seen those) and has beautiful views over both. However I was just too scared and frankly we are enjoying life far too much to jeopardise it!
We were told by someone who lives here, how, during the drive up the mountain to Munnar, drivers will wait for the falling stones to stop then drive on again until they saw more rocks falling and would then wait again etc. Overtake on blind bends and generally take risks. One tour guide refused to go on a bus again after returning with a group of people and changed their itinerary to exclude buses. I didn’t want to see Myristica fragran trees (cultivated for Nutmeg, from its seed, and mace, from the seed covering) that badly and luckily Glen didn’t seem to either.
So having started on a negative but truthful tone, I just want to say that as always the few people we met during our stay (and the wildlife) saved the day.
We loved the garden of our first homestay which was very chilled and had plenty of birds and squirrels to keep us amused. The Indian lady next door also kept me happy by banging and slapping her smalls on a washing stone each morning. (Grin)
Our second Homestay had a well placed communal balcony over-looking a lovingly tended and stocked, mini jungle of a garden. The owners had planted an abundance of tropical plants and trees, which, over the ten years since they took over the building and grounds, had become a little haven for local birds and gigantic insects and provided hours of fun for the twitchers. (Glen and Dominic)
Please excuse the amount of photos below but finding and photographing birds and insects has become obsessive here in a “Where’s Wally?” sort of way. And having Dominic (a British guy who was staying there too) with a long lens and the same interest in photography as Glen, well let’s just say it made for a good unspoken competition each day which resulted in stunning photos by both as far as I’m concerned . (we are only showing Glen’s here)
We think this little bird is a Purple Sunbird.
This White Cheeked Barbet (below) was difficult to see but you could hear it’s frog like call everywhere we went. We became a bit obsessed with it!
These large Rose-ringed parakeets (below) are the UK’s most abundant naturalised Parrots. Established in the wild in the 70’s after captive birds escaped or were released, they have flourished in London, enduring the British winters better than Glen! We did actually see them flying above us on Horse guards parade when we were there last April but we were excited to see them close up in the wild here in India!
Biju, the lovely Indian man who owned our second Homestay, with his equally lovely Polish wife, had recently had a heart attack at only 41 years of age! He had to take it easy so had plenty of time to sit and chat to us. He’d also been hit in two road accidents which made for a good victim to victim conversation with Glen! On comparing scars though I think Biju won. Anyway we were complimenting him on his garden and he said with a straight face and an endearing Indian accent…. “horse shit” “that is all we feed the plants“ well it has made them grow well and encouraged so many birds into the trees. We also talked at length about the awful floods in 2018 (and again last year) that had flooded their Homestay and washed away all of the trees in the little lanes leading up to their house. And how is was because of the gamble the government took in letting the dams fill up during the monsoon and then having to open them (without giving notice to anyone) before they actually burst. This caused a massive amount of damage and devastation to so many villages.
Anyway, as we were in ‘Venice’ we had to stop sitting around talking to Biju, leave the safety and joy of our own little bit of ‘jungle’ and go on a ‘gondola’ ride!
We were encouraged to choose a small eco friendly non-motorised boat option. “It is good for the environment and will mean that you will not have any noise from an engine” they said. So off we went on a short rickshaw ride with the young Indian guy (from our first homestay) racing ahead of us on his motorbike, hair flowing behind him like a teenage Mowgli. We arrived at the end of a lane and then followed him a short distance on foot until we were at the waters edge.
Apparently we were to cross the first waterway in a little wooden ‘ferry’ boat ‘punted’ by an elderly man who, I thought, should have been at home doing a crossword or watching ‘homes under the hammer’, instead of getting us across from one side to the other in the heat of the midday sun.
Glen just said “and we didn’t pay the ferryman until we got to the other side” I’ve no idea what he is on about!
To our delight we were catching what was obviously the local ferry, this was not a private journey. A lady got in to the boat with us, I asked her if she could swim and she said (through an interpreter) that no, she could not swim! Living here in the backwaters and she couldn’t swim! Madness! By the way, Glen just said the ferryman comment was, he hates to admit, a line from a Chris de Burgh song! 🙄 He is not a fan….. although clearly knows the lyrics. (wink)
We made our way safely to the other side without the need for the lady or us to perform any sort of stroke or doggy paddle and we thanked the ‘gondolier’!
We then walked through the narrow strips of land between the water (what they call the village) until we arrived at our “Captain‘s house”
When we met him I said “I love the purple paint”, the sort of thing you say when in fact what you really want to say is “oh you’ve painted your house purple! That’s weird”
We were told that he’d painted it purple for his daughter’s wedding that had recently been held there. Hec! an Indian wedding, which usually has 100’s of guests was held in a ‘NO up, two down’ house! Now that would have been a sight to see.
So we said goodbye to Mogli and went inside to meet the ‘Captain’s’ wife who had prepared lunch for us ahead of our four hour boat journey.
The meal was tasty which is just as well because they both stool watching us eat it rather than sitting down to eat with us!! The newspapers slipped a little to reveal a glass top with ring marks and grubbiness. No worries I kept my cool and ate the meal until I thought that one of the dishes on the paper ‘banana leaf’ might actually be insects! I took a crafty close up photo….. I swear I saw two eyes! I was told later that evening it was just garlic! Well I’ve never seen garlic with eyes and a tail like a baby sting ray! But apparently they eat the whole crushed garlic clove including the papery outside which we would remove. I suppose if you are poor you eat everything, waste not want not and all that.
Finally, having met their newly married daughter we walked past our hostess hanging her washing out, and went on down to the little boat which we managed to get in without incident.
Eventually, when out of the narrow waterway on the large lake, we were being rowed in a silent non-mechanical boat amongst lots of medium and large noisy mechanical boats!! Sort of defeated the object really. lol! Eventually we were back in a little narrow backwater and the only sound we heard were the birds in the trees and women banging their washing on stones and dibble dabbling it in the water. Other times there was the sound of our ‘Captain’ either singing or playing ‘Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream…” on his hand like the sound the narrator made using the large shell in the Kathakali play in Fort Kochi! He was as happy as the day was long. I did wonder, as the hours went by, whether he had some of that Coconut Toddy (local homemade alcohol) in his plastic bottle as apposed to water!! There were bits in it, or maybe the bottle was just dirty!
We’ve never seen so many Eagles and birds of prey in one place before. The Red Back Sea Eagles and Brahmin Kites were circling above us then diving into the water to catch fish. Annoyingly we didn’t manage to capture them with our camera.
I zoomed in to take a photo of some cows next to a little house and when I got back I realised I had captured this cat who appears to have a bindi! which is much more interesting.
As we were being rowed along, the villagers were going about their normal day to day business, washing themselves, (and swilling the river water in their mouths!), banging their washing on stones at the waters edge and also washing up their metal food dishes in the same water. As we made our way back four hours later they were then fishing, presumably for their tea. All ages, from old women to young children, stood quietly with a stick and piece of string. Such basic living in a beautiful area.
We could see piles of shells by the little huts and houses along the backwaters. We read that the villagers collect clams to eat and then sell the shells. It’s called shell mining.
‘Before the floods, following the heavy rain in the monsoons there was an abundance of black clam (Villorita cyprinoides) The villagers, stand in water and pick the shells. The shells have commercial value as it is used as raw material for manufacturing cement, fertilizers, pesticides and some medicines.
We thought our journey had ended when we moored up and had to follow our ‘Captain’ alongside paddy fields until we ended up in the middle of nowhere at what looked like a ‘duck farm’. As we were taking some photos a scantily glad man suddenly appeared behind us with a cleaver and started to climb a pre-prepared Palm tree (rope wound around it) saying “coconut!?” The ‘Captain’ had a big grin on his face, I’m sure this was a way to earn a bit extra on top of the fee we paid for the trip, but we declined (to their surprise) and so we made our way back where we had walked and got back on the boat once again! I’m sure we had just missed a chance to try the local homemade coconut alcohol they call ‘Toddy’. We had heard about this drink made from the sap of Palm trees and we had read in the news recently that eleven people had fallen ill and died after drinking it in the Philippines in December just gone!
This couple had been collecting this vegetation to feed their cattle we were told.
Since we arrived in Alleppey we have seen our first Kingfisher bird here and also drank our first Kingfisher beer in India. During our visit to the north we went 16 days without a drink, we didn’t want a drink badly enough to have it in a paper bag under the table. However, here we did fancy a tipple on the balcony.
Therefore this time we made our first visit to a ‘Government Beer shop’. It wasn’t as bad as we imagined, the locals queue downstairs in a dingy area for the local brew, and tourists go upstairs to a ‘premium’ shop. Once inside It looked very civilised, the only thing that reminded us that we were in India was the fact they wrapped the bottles in newspaper. Of course the minute you step outside it’s very evident where you are.
We left Alleppey in a auto rickshaw (I have been mistakingly calling them tuk tuks since arriving in India) we chugged and bumbled along just half an hour up the coast to Marari Beach.
I was delighted with how slow the driver was going. However, we soon learnt why… he made a phone call and then said that we had to get out! He said his friend would be coming to take us the rest of the way as his breaks weren’t working! Super! So that explained his careful driving! 🙄 all was well and we arrived at the end of a deep sandy lane and had to walk the rest of the way towards our Homestay which was near the beach.
There were plenty of birds and creatures to keep us occupied amongst the tropical vegetation and inside the Homestay itself! We had to give up catching things under glasses and just accept there were going to be more than just the two of us in this accommodation.
Below is the common Myna bird.
On our first stroll down to the beach I could see lots of small, what I assumed were flies so I just walked through them thinking they would part as we walked through. However, I realised on our return that they were shrimp like spiders hanging on long threads from a palm frond above the path and would therefore have just clung to our clothes as we walked through. 🙈 Glen keeps harping on about going to a Jungle but the ‘wildlife’ we are coming across on our travels so far is enough of an adventure for me! (As I sit proofing this from our next destination I can report that there are wild Leopards in the hills around us! And if you can believe what our taxi driver said, wild Tigers and Elephant can also be seen crossing the roads of our drive through the mountains.)
One morning as we were sat on the beach having our Indian breakfast looking out to sea, watching the fisherman untangling their nets I picked up a piece of watermelon and Glen said “you’d think they would have developed a watermelon without the annoying black seeds in by now!” And I said “who are they? the watermelon gods!?” He then went on to talk about natural propagation and I said “the seeds are for us to eat and poop out!?” Lol! Anyway I’m sure the other couples sat eating were having more romantic conversations whilst enjoying their fruit in the morning sunshine. Lol!
There have been all sorts of insects that we’ve never seen before. The sort that looks like a child might draw having got two types muddled together! And as for the ants! They come in all shapes and sizes…. microscopic, teeny tiny, extra small, small, medium, large, extra large and flying! The Mosquitos are huge! Then there are the Frogs, Geckos, large colourful square beetles that masquerade as a folded up quality street wrapper and large Moths that are clearly evolving into some kind of small mammal in front of our eyes. There are huge Butterflies here that look like they have been breeding and mutating from the coast of Japan where the earthquake that damaged several of their nuclear reactors in 2011!
These friendly locals guys invited us to play a board game. It was a mix of ‘shove ha’penny’, backgammon and air hockey ……. we decided to leave them to it.
I love the way they display their packets of coffee and crisps etc draped over string or wooden poles. We’ve seen it all over Asia. The UK companies or anyone exporting to this market are obviously aware of the need to supply their products into Asia packed in this way. It’s just the little things like this that are of interest sometimes. A well known brand hanging in a little local shop next to the bananas.
On googling to find out the correct name for a large bunch of bananas I come across the following list of frequently asked questions about Bananas.
QUESTION 1: How much radiation is in a banana?
Oh please who asks these daft questions….. but I found myself reading on.
‘Each banana contains 45 mg of potassium…… The radiation from bananas measures out as 3,520 picocuries per kilo – that’s high enough to set off the more sensitive type of radiation alarms. If you ate one banana per day, you’d receive a dose of 2.6 mrem per year.’
HEC! Why didn’t anyone tell us that when they talk about keeping healthy by having eating a banana as part of your ‘five a day’!?
Glen just looked up and said “Carrots help you see in the dark and Bananas make you glow” lol!
QUESTION 2: Can eating more than six bananas at once kill you?
I almost scrolled past this one, which I though was a stupid question. However I’m glad I didn’t.
‘It would be impossible to overdose on bananas. You would probably need around 400 bananas a day to build up the kind of potassium levels that would cause your heart to stop beating… (STOP YOUR HEART BEATING!!!??) Bananas are not dangerous – and in fact they are, and always have been, very good for you.’
Good grief! Well now you know that if you were to find yourself shipwrecked on a tropical island you would be best advised not to gorge yourself on this innocent looking fruit!
QUESTION 3: Is eating your own poop bad for you?
What the hell has that got to do with bananas?…. hang on, more to the point, who hell is wanting to find out!?
I had closed the browser before reading it properly so just googled my original question again to get the exact wording of the poop question and this time the following informant has come up.
‘The banana fruits develop from the banana heart, in a large hanging cluster, made up of tiers (called “hands”), with up to 20 fruit to a tier. The hanging cluster is known as a bunch, comprising 3–20 tiers, or commercially as a “banana stem”, and can weigh 30–50 kilograms.’
‘Banana stem’ that is what I was expecting it to say. Anyway, this time there is no mention of the question “is eating your own poop bad for you” or words to that effect. I swear I didn’t dream it! It was there at the bottom of a long list of questions about bananas. You will have to trust me on this one.
I’m a tad worried that anyone looking at Glen’s internet history in future will think he has a weird fetish because I googled up “is eating your own poop bad for you?” again to try to find it again. Lol!
Our neighbour doing her washing
Our gardener, well, leaf sweeper.
As I think about the long journey ahead of us, to our next destination, I’m a little anxious as always…. but sitting here on the beach looking out to sea eating our curried egg and parotta breakfast I look up and realise that we are more at risk from the coconuts falling on our head than the many and varied forms of transport ahead of us!
Some palm trees have nets hanging under the centre of the tree presumably to catch the falling fruit. (‘Botanically speaking, a coconut is a fibrous one-seeded drupe, also known as a dry drupe. However, when using loose definitions, the coconut can be all three: a fruit, a nut, and a seed’) They put me in mind of those guys who used to knock on your door at home to ask if you wanted one of those handmade metal chimney cowls putting on your chimney to stop the birds falling down into your fireplace! I could imagine a guy going from place to place here offering to shimmy up your tree to fix a net.
We’ve had lots of people coming to our door in our private walled Homestay! As we’ve sat outside listening to the birds and washing noises we’ve had various local people peep through the gate and smile at us! They just seem to want to have a look at us, although one couple came right up to us and seemed to hang around longer and I felt sure they were beggars! Glen just said they were! Although I think they could have been clothes stealers! I washed and hung out a couple of the Homestay’s pillow cases on the line in the garden and I never saw them again! My big M&S NVP knickers and bras never went missing though! I guess it’s because the women here are petite so they wouldn’t get much for them on the black market!
The owner and his family were hard working and very welcoming hosts during our short stay and when we left he insisted on wearing Glen’s 15kilo backpack on his back at the same time as carrying my 15+++! kilo wheelie backpack on his shoulder! We tried to tell him it was too much for him to carry but he insisted. However, once he started walking up the sandy lane I think he realised he had taken on too much but he wouldn’t give in. He just got slower and slower and was sinking deeper and deeper in to the sand. Lol!
So, we say goodbye to Kerala, ‘Gods own country’ and make our way by land to Agoda Beach via Madgaon, Goa on a 17 hour journey using a variety of motorised vehicles. Joy!
Wow,some amazing photography, what a fantastic trip.xxx
Read this to Eloise tonight..well most of it. I skipped over the beginning and a few bits as she has a good imagination and thought I wouldn’t go into load of detail about floods. She loved looking through the photos and hearing about where people live and what it’s like. She liked the purple house and how it was different to ours. Miles also saw the boats and we liked nanny Mandy’s clothes but the ladies pink clothes on the boat was Eloise’s favourite.
We read this after looking at India on our large atlas book. They enjoy learning about new places and Miles now wants to ‘go on that same boat with mummy’ I said he needs to start saving up money then.
Those bird photos are outstanding; you have captured the essence of your surroundings and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the narrative. I look forward to the next instalment. Rx
What a fascinating journey! I felt that I was with you both on the boat trip, and you give a great insight into the local culture and people, as always.
The picture of the ‘cat with a bindi’ is an absolute gem!
Enjoyed Glen’s witty comment about the ferryman. Accordng to mythology, you shouldn’t pay the ferryman till he gets you to the other side, or he will take your soul and leave you as his replacement, taking people to Hades eternally. I am not up on Chris de Burgh, but you might check out the excellent Ralph McTell song, “The Ferryman”.
Anyway, I am off to eat a banana now. I just don’t care!
Alan
‘Feel the fear’ is definitely the correct title to this blog. We could never endure most of these experiences. You are so brave to try/sample these journeys. You will have so many memories to reflect on in the years to come.
Good on you both. All our love Mum and Dennis x
Thanks for your lovely comment. However, I felt the fear and DIDN’T do it anyway 🙈 lol! X