Kerala – day 2

Alleppey

Friday, 31st March 2023

Today, we plan to take a boat ride through the Alleppey backwaters. At 8 AM, a tuk-tuk is waiting for us at the gate to take us to the ferry stop. Our boatman is already there waiting for us. We wait for a few more people to arrive, and then we board the ferry.

We’re joined by Pavel from Bangladesh and Candelaria from Argentina. We ride on ferry for about half an hour, then stop for breakfast at a local Indian family’s house. We have something like rice with potatoes and coconut with sugarcane. There, we also meet a Polish couple who were on the early morning boat ride. After breakfast, we walk a bit to get to our kayak. On the way, Pavel asks us what our names are, but he doesn’t quite understand, so he thinks Jozef is called Sultan and I am Sultana. We start kayaking around 10 AM in a narrow canal. The first hour is quite interesting—people live all along the backwaters, washing clothes, cleaning fish, or bathing. They even deliver newspapers by boat.

Pavel records everything on video while narrating along the way. He also takes a lot of posed photos, which is quite funny, so we’re entertained. You can also rent a houseboat in the backwaters, complete with rooms and a kitchen, but they’re quite expensive. After about an hour, it starts to get a bit boring, and the heat is intense. I’m starting to feel drained. Our boatman occasionally sings a song and calls me “madam”. We take a short break for a coconut drink.

Afterward, we head back for lunch. Lunch is served on a banana leaf—rice, fish curry, salad, something with mango, something with beets, and a few other dishes. It’s pretty decent.

We then head back to the ferry. We’re at a stop that’s a bit out of the way, so the ferry is summoned by a bag tied to a branch. It’s quite bizarre.

On the ferrry way back, we fall asleep. Once we’re back in the city, we go to exchange some money and look for an Airtel operator. We find a mobile shop, so we ask if they have SIM cards, and they do. We ask him three times how much it costs, and he just keeps saying “passport”. Without thinking too much, we decide to buy them. We end up spending over an hour filling out the paperwork, and then he charges us 550 INR each for activating the SIM cards, even though it normally costs less than 100 INR. We argue with him for a bit, but there’s no turning back. He totally ripped us off (about 10 euros, which could buy four dinners for two).

Later, I message Jibu, as the SIM cards were registered in his name, and the official store was just around corner, but what’s done is done. Then we head for a terrible coffee and take a look at a Hindu temple in the city center, just from the outside. We’re just glad we survived the chaotic traffic. Afterward, we try to catch the sunset at the beach, but we only catch a glimpse of it from the street. By the time we reach the beach, only a small part of sun is visible, and there are about a million people there. So, we turn around and head to Canal Restaurant for dinner. I order something vegetarian, and Jozef gets chicken curry, both served with parotta. For the evening we buy some mangoes and a watermelon.