(LAST INDIA POST IS HERE (12/April/18 - Amritsar and wrap-up of India Trip)
03 – 05 March
Alappuzha (or Alleppey) is a city on the Laccadive Sea in
the southern Indian state of Kerala. It's best known for houseboat cruises
along the rustic Kerala backwaters.
A nice train ride to
Alleppey. We sat with a young couple, a Brit and a Colombian, who somehow made their
way into second class aircon, because the other carriage “was full”. We had a
great conversation with them, lovely kids on a 7-9 month
trip though India, S.E. Asia, ending in the Philippines or “whenever our money
runs out”. When we arrived we had lunch with them at a
VERY dodgy little place. I think the bill was under $2. The next train station
meal was our cheapest ever, 2 coffees, idly, and banana fritters; all for 66 cents.
But that was Kochi, more later.
The accommodation was
crap. Fantastic view, but nasty hot little room. No shower and hot as hell. Oh
well. We took a lovely boat ride through the backwaters which are amazingly
beautiful. Left at 6.30 am, just getting light, so the intensely heavy traffic
of large houseboats had not yet started. This was a difficult stop, mainly I
think because of the heat. The temperature is only about 34, but lots of
humidity with it; we’re not used to it.
I think this was one of better videos:
Narda held an eagle on our breakfast stop – they said the
bird had lived there for the past sixteen-years.
Our morning boat ride, leaving at six-thirty am was peaceful
as the many boats had yet to hit the road. There was just the two of us and the
driver. We could have laid down – but we would have fallen to sleep so we sat
up – see our groovy boat below.
We paid 400 rupees ($6.15 USD) per hour and did four hours. In 2016, Centre for Science and Environment rated Alappuzha as the top cleanest town in India. Everything is by its own standards. Not quite the same as tidy-towns in Australia. There are still enormous amounts of trash along the road, in the river. Everywhere. Perhaps compared to other towns it was clean.
The view from our porch at Malayalam Ayurvedic Lake
Resort (http://malayalamholidays.com/)
was amazing, the room was awful – small – dirty – no air
conditioning – shower barely spits out water, and the manager was not friendly.
There is no ‘amazing breakfast’ as stated on their homepage. They order out
from a nearby restaurant. Not sure why it is referred to as a resort. And as
was the case back in Varkala, the Ayurvedic trip was
highly advertised but we did not see any sign of activity. The hotel or ‘resort’
next door had signs all over advertising the same thing but again no one around
doing such activity. The view below is a couple of minutes from our ‘home’.
Sitting on our porch we watched houseboat after houseboat go by – see our video
clip, a lot was shot from our porch.
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We saw this boat on one of our travels – a couple of kids
had taken a lot of plastic bottles (and there are a lot in the water) and made
a raft out of them. Unfortunately, I did not have my zoom lens on at the time.
We met some folks from Belgium and Narda spoke Dutch with
them and we went off looking for a place to eat. The nearest restaurant was on
an island and we found a row boat ferry to go across on. On the way back Narda
paddled us across with the owner – see the end of our video. Luckily there were
no houseboats in our area at the time.
Our see the short version of the clip with the actual rowing here -
It was a bit of a walk from where Malayalam Ayurvedic Lake
Resort was to the main road – along a dirt track, along a canal, up the
road and a fifteen-minute ride into town where we found some restaurants from ‘Lonely
Planet’ that were at best adequate.
Two days was enough for us in this place and we were happy
getting the train out of there to Kochi.