Day 5 - Cruisin' into Kochi
Evan Reznicek, 16 August 2013, 19:20
This morning we left Trivandrum at about 8am. After a four hour drive through typical crazy Indian traffic, we arrived at Allepey. Here we disembarked for a half day houseboat cruise through the backwaters of Kerala.
Our tour guide gave us a brief description of the backwaters and the history of houseboats. The Kerala backwaters are a series of canals and lakes lying parallel to the Arabian Sea on the south west side of India. According to our tour guide, their formation is due primarily to the long monsoon season that India experiences. India has two monsoon seasons, one from June through August, the other from September through November. During this period India receives significant amounts of rain, which forms rivers running to the coast. The action of waves and shore currents create low barrier across the mouths of many of these rivers, separating the freshwater from the rivers from the sea water. The result is a series of interconnected canals, rivers, and lakes.
The rivers and narrow cannals of the Kerala backwaters form a transportation network with which people navigate the swampy landscape. They depend on the water for their livelyhood, but not for drinking - our tourguide told us they receive drinking water from the local municipality. Rice is the main crop grown in the area, and many people make a living cultivating it here. There are also a lot of coconut trees, which only makes sense in Kerala, or "land of coconuts".
Houseboats are one of the most prominent tourist attractions to the area. Kochi is known as the commercial capital of Kerala, and has a long history of international trade. People from all around the world came to Cochin to get spices. There were no roads at the time, so people used large boats (similar to large canoes) to navigate inland where they could collect spices. The journey through the backwaters took about a day back then, requiring overnight travel. To accomodate for longer on board stays, people began building roofs on their boats to protect against the elements.
By the 1980's, tourism in the area had grown considerably. In response, people started adding bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, etc. to the houseboats. Today Allepey is home to around 1300 houseboats. Our journey started down a scenic cannal, which eventually gave way to a very large lake. We were served a lunch of fish, rice, and various Indian vegetable dishes. After an hour or so, our journey across the lake finished, and we entered a series of what appeared to be man made cannals. Our tour guide clarified that these were actually rice fields - a single deep, house boat-navigable cannal snaked through large, water covered rice fields. Our tour guide informed us that the fields we were passing through were possibly some of the only rice fields that exist below sea level. Unfortunately, excessive rains had damaged the rice crop this year, so these fields would remain barren.
We circled through the rice fields, emerging into a large lake adjacent to the cannal we started out in. Here we disembarked from the house boat and got on the the bus for an hour and half trip north to Kochi. Just as it started to rain, we arrived and settled into our hotel, which provides a beautiful view of the Vembanad Lake. We are all now looking forward to some rest before starting another adventure tomorrow.
That ends today's blog. Look for Nicole's entry tomorrow, but in the mean time, keep calm and curry on.
Evan Reznicek
