Day 34 - Andrew

Catching the 10.30am boat to Kollam was a little more challenging than we expected. None of the rickshaw drivers seemed to understand "boat" or "Kollam" and the one who did took us to be wrong boat jetty. Fortunately the boatman there knew where we needed to go and led us there himself. The boat was full of other Western - or possibly Russian - tourists. Once we started moving we were allowed to go up onto the top deck, which had a much better view. We headed out from the town centre along a fairly narrow canal and then turned right onto a much wider canal, as if we were joining the motorway. A sign said Kollam 82km, with an arrow, just like a road sign. After that it was hard to understand the logic of where we were going or whether we were on the main drag or not. Sometimes we veered off down narrow canals where two boats could pass comfortably on the calm green waters but you wouldn't want a third. Sometimes the canals opened into large blue-grey lakes. Since we weren't doing the navigation, so we could just sit back and enjoy the view. At the beginning there were dozens of large house boats, some built like miniature cruise ships but in the style of a modernised Chinese junk. We also passed a lot of beautifully painted, well-kept but modest houses, which - as regular followers of this blog will know - is not a common sight in India. Was prawn farming more lucrative than we thought? Could they be weekend baches for rich people from the city? Or, most likely, had they been done up to hire out to strange rich Westerners, who liked living in country cottages when they could afford a mansion?

The boat stopped for lunch at a small restaurant, which served thalis and not much else. Being good cheapskate Kiwis, we had brought our own lunch, including a pineapple which Heather attempted to cut using my 30-year-old pocket knife with a loose blade. We decided to finish the pineapple on the boat. We beat the Russians to the chairs in the shade and enjoyed the afternoon ride. Towards the end we passed some kind of mining operation which seemed to be discharging its pollutants straight back into the canal and a series of villages which also seemed to use the canal as a rubbish dump. As the kids have pointed out in previous posts, you get a lot of this. And despite reading the excellent "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" (great non-fiction book about life in a Mumbai airport slum, thanks Andrew Stone) I'm still none the wiser. Excel to say that a lot of other villages didn't do this, so it's not inevitable.

We came out onto Lake Ashtamudi, which looks like it has islands everywhere. As far as I can see, it's actually all mainland but the lake is like a series of fingers which creates the illusion. The boat dropped us off at Ashtamudi Villas, which is at the water's edge. It has a beautiful green garden, full of palm trees and string hammocks, with brick bungalows behind. Feeling very tired after our day on the boat, we showered, ate and went to bed.

Pictures, from top (no one else believes in captions but I do); Our boat in Alleppy, Megan at the front, typical canal view, boats at our lunch stop, sunset and church on Lake Ashtamudi.