Day 19

I woke up and went for a stroll around town around sunrise. Once off the main streets, Alleppy is a quiet, friendly town, and since every house is surrounded by palm trees and flowers, it makes even the average run-down house look like a little bit of paradise. Around 10 we went to check out the houseboat that we had arranged through our hotel. It looked great, so we agreed to the deal, and then went for a walk around town to secure provisions (beer, fruit, crackers, since the other guys still weren't feeling ready for Indian food, which is what would be cooked for us on board). It would be a 22-hour overnight tour through the backwaters, and at $115 was one of the most expensive things we paid for in India, but it was still an incredible bargain.

The boat had two bedrooms in the rear, and the covered but open front area that contained a dining table, a sitting area, and a big soft couch to lay out on. We had three crew members, including a cook, to take care of the three passengers.

Within 10 minutes of sitting on the boat, we all knew it would be hard to leave the next day. Even if had just stayed docked in town for the whole time, it would have been really nice. But it got a whole lot better when we set off through the backwater canals. After we crossed Vemband lake, we pulled up against a stone dike surrounding a large rice field and took a short walk to a shack where a fisherman was selling giant tiger prawns. We bought one to cook up for dinner later on.

After lunch we started out again, passing down palm tree-lined waterways with rice paddies on either side, and seeing villagers going about their daily business, paddling by in their rowboats, or pounding clothes on the steps outside their houses. Compared to everything else we had seen in India over the past 18 days, the peace and quiet was almost a shock.

As the sun began to lower in the west, the pilot asked if we'd like to take a walk through a village. Sure we would, though after seeing all the other tourist houseboats floating the backwaters throughout the day, I got myself ready to be accosted by "villagers" trying to sell their tourist kitsch to yet another round of rich white folks. So I was so surprised and delighted when it turned out to a genuine, unspoiled backwater village with no tourist side to it at all. Only after walking around for a bit did we learn that it was the village that our crew was from, so essentially they were just showing us around their home and taking time of their own to visit friends and family. One house we came by, accessible on its tiny island only by walking across a suspended log, turned out to be that of our pilot, where his wife showed us the big fish she had ready to cook up for his dinner. Dennis stopped to play cards with a group of guys sitting in a circle in a little clearing, while an older man tried to instruct us the absolute best moment at which to photograph the setting sun, and kids gathered around simply to watch the "very famous" white visitors. It was a beautiful experience, and I feel lucky to have been there. Especially considering that it may be a very brief window in time between when such a place is accessible to tourists, and when it's destroyed by them. As the Eagles said, when you call a place paradise, you may as well kiss it goodbye. And this definitely a place that could be called paradise.

Darkness fell and we returned to the boat which remained docked near the village for the night. The cook served up an excellent Keralan dinner, including our tiger prawn, and we finished off our beers. Dennis slathered on enormous amounts of mosquito repellant, which still didn't stop them, while, as usual, they didn't bother me at all. I think I got one mosquito bite the whole time in India, and I hardly used any repellant. Malaria-schlmaria. But when we saw a giant cockroach run across the wall of the boat that even scared the lizards hanging out on the same wall, we figured it was time to crawl under the cover of our nets and go to sleep.