Backwaters, Alleppy to Kotayam

FROM JAN 4th
We rise early to get the local ferry to Kotayam but 5 minutes before we leave our moody guesthouse owner decides we must move rooms! We’re mad!! But no time to argue, we rush to pack everything up for him to move to a new room while we’re on the boat trip. This beautiful colonial house was his family home and we wonder if he resents having to ‘share’ it? Around the walls he’s painted some interesting murals of meditating ½ naked gurus, fighting kalari warriors and dancing bare-breasted women. But there is something decidedly odd about these murals….although they look like ‘devi’s’ they don’t seem to be any of the usual Hindu gods or Mahabarata stories. The cartoonish faces and large limbed figures almost seem like westerners ….big thighs, big breasts, big noses! Is there some subtle caricature going on here? Perhaps he’s making fun of the hand that feeds? But the strangest thing of all is the little white ball of fluff that scurries around chewing on people’s toes! A yappy Indian lap dog? But all the boys who help run the place adore him, cooing and peering into his ‘baby bear face’ …. Jingi ! Jingi!
As we race to the jetty, annoyed at having to move and anxious we’ll miss the boat, we dream up murder mysteries about this strange man and his ancestral home, an Agatha Christie opportunity in Alleppy! Must have been a family feud …. drowned his ½ foreign step mother down the well?
The jetty is crowded, we clamber through a boat to get to our ferry, no seats left …so we perch on the boats edge. Some crazy gringos squeeze their big backpacks and fat first-class baby in designer buggy onto this local boat…. they must be insane!
Heavily laden, we lumbers up the canal past large houseboats made of coir, into the mist covered morning lake. The ladies behind us smile and nudge each other as we turn round, delicate gold earring chains shiver as they giggle at the gringos. Soon a flood of coloured saris sashay by us to get off the boat. They’re teachers at a local school, the one permissible profession for the respectable, educated girl .
We get a bench to ourselves and our cares begin to drift away as the ferry chugs along across the lake, by long boats, houseboats, little fishing vessels with sails made from re-cycled rice bags, swathes of green water hyacinths with long beaked birds nibbling at the edges. At one point we spot a large clump of floating weeds in the distance, as we draw close they magically transform into hundreds of ducks huddled together in the middle of the lake
As we head down the smaller back canals into the remote villages we witness life on the waterways. At the lake’s edge fishermen stand waist high in water spearing fish, boats laden with breezeblocks and red-turbaned laborers head down the narrow canals. We pass a village temple … arches of fluttering white paper and clangy music blaring from load speakers! Then a majestic white church, with blue arched windows surrounded by gracious palms.

On wobbly jetties children stare out through wide kohl-lined eyes, yellow turmeric smeared on their foreheads, while women beat brightly coloured laundry at the water’s edge, laying it over nobbly bushes to dry. A baby goat is tethered in a brightly flowered garden with red communist flag,….a lady rushes out to hand the ferryman a bundle of letters to post, these remote dwellings rely on the canals as their only mode of transport.
Between villages we glimpse brilliant green paddy fields dotted with white cranes, and occasional clumps of people planting rice. Wind blown palm trees lean precariously next to twisted telegraph poles and tangled power cables, proof that electricity, albeit intermittent, has arrived here.
We are quietly able to watch life as it floats by, and on the boat a constant ebb and flow of locals, mothers with children in fluorescent orange dresses or babies gazing over their shoulders, crisply ironed men in smart checked shirts and lungis going to work, old men, knarled faces resting on leathered hands as they doze. A series of little draw-bridges, with CMP slogans and communist flags flying, must be manually hauled up for the ferry to pass Nearing Kotayam, there are some soft saffron coloured houses with Portuguese roof tiles and outdoor porches. The afternoon lulls into the evening and on our return journey, dusk hovers over the lake as large 5 star caliber houseboats head home laden with their luxury cargo of wealthy tourists. We leave the sun setting over the stillness of the lake and head back to Alleppy and the ‘murder mystery’guest house! Our new room is in the back, a large garden area surrounded by a porch and chairs to sit outside. As we’re sipping chai, surprisingly our moody guesthouse owner cautiously befriends us! He explains he’s redesigning the back garden, there’s a tree house and some shaded benches and tables to eat outside, and there’s a large well! (oh no!) …. But we warm to him, he seems much friendlier tonight, or perhaps we’ve mellowed after our day on the water. His name is Schaffi and the miniature white ‘bear-dog’ at his heels is Jingi. He grew up in the house, his father is a well known Malayali filmmaker. He definitely seems a bit eccentric as we sit in the garden and he fries mosquitoes with his electric fly swatter! What a device! And what a turn around, from mean and irritating this morning to chatty and charming this evening. But before I head for bed, I can’t help my furtive glance at the large and deep well in the garden , wondering!