Oh Backwaters, Keep on Rollin’

Chinese fishing net
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By Dan

Another day, another stamp in the passport. Hello, India! Ninety minutes of flying brought the six of us from the craziness in Sri Lanka to Kerala, a state on the southwest coast of India. Cochin, variously spelled Cochi, Kochi, Kochin, or Coochy-coochy-coo (OK, I made up that last one, but India has been changing the names of all of its cities over the last few years, which makes complicated navigation even more so), has a big, sleek airport, and the people look very much like they do in Sri Lanka, but outside the airport there was just a little more chaos and crowds, to let us know that we were in a different country. I’ve always said that either you can handle traveling in India, or you can’t, and if you don’t go running back to the airport in the first three hours with an emotional meltdown due to sensory overload, you’re probably going to make it. Of course, my last India experience was in 1989, so I’m a little out of date. Check that – a lot out of date. Kerala was probably a good place for the kids to start their first India experience, as it is really a very mellow place compared to the crowds and poverty of India’s bigger cities. Christina and I, as well as my parents, all knew what we were getting into, but it’s new territory for the kids.

Admiring the catch
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Let me back up to a little adventure at Colombo airport, as we were trying to get out of Sri Lanka. Christina discovered just after we passed through immigration that her little black pouch containing travelers checks, a bit of cash, etc., was missing. It had last been seen while we were standing in line waiting to check in. She, and then she and I, went back through immigration and asked around, but had no luck. Most of the people we talked to just rolled their eyes, and it was not looking good. We left our names with various folks, and started making the lists of what we’d need to do to replace the stuff in the pouch. Just as we were heading into our gate to await boarding, though, my mom heard a page for a “Ms. Christina” to please contact main security. Off Christina went, but she was gone a long time, and I was starting to make plans re: whether to put the kids on the flight to Kerala with my parents, etc. Then, Christina returned with a big smile on her face. There was no such thing as main security, but she managed to find somebody – her pouch had gone on the little conveyor belt with the rest of our luggage, and had been found somewhere in the bowels of the airport. Thank you, Sri Lankan Airlines and its honest employees, and thank you, Mom, for hearing the page.

Our houseboat
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OK, back to Kerala. The long drive in to Cochin from the airport gave us the chance to look around and start absorbing a new country. Lots more English writing on signs, etc., than in Sri Lanka; pretty good roads; more crowded and dirty than we were used to, but not too bad; and gigantic steps forward from my memories of 1986 and 1989. Like I said, I’m out of date. Ultimately, we got to Fort Cochin, which is a neat old area that features a fort built by the Portuguese, who controlled the area in the 1500s and 1600s, or the Dutch, who controlled it in the 1600s and 1700s, before the English took over around 1800. Quite a history. Our hotel was a charming old building with a nice courtyard in back, whose character made up for some missing comforts. As noted, we are all used to great variety in our accommodations!

Houseboats lined up
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Out we went to walk the streets. It’s still really hot and steamy, but trees and a thin cover of clouds made it relatively bearable. Cochin is perhaps best known for the technique that some of its fishermen use, which was introduced by the Chinese about 800 years ago. Picture a square, flat piece of net about 20 feet on each side, with each corner attached to a long piece of wood, and the four pieces of wood connected at the top. Where the wood connects, there’s a rope that goes over a pulley. A team of about 4 guys lets the net down into the water, where it sits for a while. Then, the team pulls hard on the rope, slowly raising the net and, hopefully, whatever fish have been unfortunate enough to have paused above the net. It’s hard work for an occasional fish or two, but hey, it has fed people for 8 centuries, so why argue? We had fun checking out the fish that were available to buy on the street, the random cats and birds that were hanging out looking for scraps, the sales people offering fish and miscellaneous trinkets for sale, and the views out over the water. Lots of activity!

In the backwaters
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It’s amazing how different the scene is here, as far as tourists. For the first time since, well, maybe the hippy treehouse place we stayed in southern Turkey, we’re seeing lots of young backpacker-type tourists. We’re also seeing lots of middle-aged (yeah, OK, that’s sort of us, but these are deeply middle-aged!) Westerners, who look like they wish they were hippies or are trying to find themselves and get in touch with their inner hippy. After Sri Lanka, which was mostly just adventurous Europeans or beach holiday Europeans, and the more well-heeled folks we saw in East Africa, it’s an interesting change.

Haulin' in the net
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Fort Cochin has some fun streets to wander, but we keep finding ourselves back along the water, checking out the fishermen. For dinner one night, Grayson was dead set on fish. After extensive negotiations with a fisherman, we bought a couple of calamari, which we then took to a restaurant down the waterfront a little where a guy cooked it to order for Grayson. That’s a nice way to know that your fish is pretty fresh. We also enjoyed a lunch and a dinner at Dal Roti, on Lilly Street, which were almost certainly the two best Indian meals I have had in my life. The owner was a charming businessman who just loves food and cooking, and had put together Dal Roti as a hobby on the side. The mughalai parata that I had, which was sort of an Indian calzone, was out of this world. If you go to Kerala, you do not want to miss this place. Commentary from a knowledgeable Indian on the American presidential race comes at no extra charge. (The guy was very well informed and thoughtful and noted, “George Bush has managed to undo in seven years the goodwill that America had built up overseas over the last 200 years.”) Pretty disconcerting…

Houseboat captain at the helm
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Kerala is best known for its backwaters, a large delta-like area that runs for 100 miles or so parallel to the coastline. Back in 1986, my friend Bob and I had traveled through the backwaters on a sort of floating bus that took us from one end to the other. Now, though, houseboat trips are big business. Christina had done the research, and made arrangements, so the six of us piled into a car in Fort Cochin and headed south for Alappuzha (formerly known as Alleppey, but fondly referred to as Allapalooza, for our linguistically challenged group). Ninety minutes of hair-raising driving later, we were pulling up in front of our floating home for the next 24 hours. Side note: our drive took us past loads of hammer and sickle flags, as the state of Kerala has democratically elected the Communist Party to power on a regular basis over at least the last 25 years, and is currently led by the Communists. Under the able kitchen management skills of a guy named Money, the skipper in a fluorescent orange shirt, and the cabin man in a slightly less shocking shade of orange, we loaded onto the boat and set out.

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Being on a boat is always pretty great, because there usually isn’t much to do besides hang out and look out at the water. (OK, sailors and others in charge of actually making the boat go where it is supposed to, will take issue with that statement, but I have historically been a passenger.) This one was no different, and unlike boats on open ocean, we were cruising up and down narrow stretches of water watching people go about their daily lives on the shores. We’d see ladies washing clothes, folks taking baths, farmers working the rice paddies, school children getting ferried across the water to or from school, and of course lots of people making their living on the water via fishing, mud collection, transport, or other things. I was most surprised to see two guys in the water playing catch with a water polo ball – Bill Brown, there may be an opportunity for you to spread your wisdom to a broader audience! (That was the second unexpected sport in two days, since the prior day we had hung out with some high school boys who were out on a big playfield in Fort Cochin at softball practice – no, not cricket, not soccer, but softball – who knew??)

Loyal readers will remember that we were involved in a car accident in Sri Lanka, when we hit a motorcycle. The bad mojo with Papa and Jojo continued, but this time we were in a boat accident. The skipper had stepped away from the helm to take a potty break or something, and the cabin man was sitting in. Either the water hyacinths had clogged the steering mechanism, or the cabin man miscalculated things, or the banks of the backwater mysteriously moved, but one way or another, we went ramming into the stone wall that forms the bank of the backwaters in most places. There was that sickening sound of wood hitting stone at a very fast rate, and then a lot of jabbering between the cabin man and the skipper, who had suddenly appeared. Whatever the cause, we pulled over down the way a bit and borrowed somebody’s hammer, and knocked things back into place. What’s a little structural damage among friends?

After a really pleasant 24 hours, we were back in Alapalooza and disembarking. Mom and Dad were heading south, and we were heading north, so we waved goodbye to them. It had been a very successful two and a half weeks with them, and I think we were all very glad that they made the trip. There will be lots of in jokes and memories from our adventures in Sri Lanka and India.

Now down to four, we headed north towards the Cochin Airport. Since it’s way out of town, and we had a 9 am flight the next day, we had decided to stay at a hotel at the airport. The Lotus 8 proved to be a big hit, especially with the kids. It was really clean, there was lots of space, and the TV got lots of channels. A nice IT guy spent two and a half hours trying (unsuccessfully) to figure out why our laptop no longer will connect to the internet, either wired or wireless (yes, that’s part of why we’re so behind on our blog entries), while Christina did lots of research and planning for further stages of our trip. Dinner was via room service, and we all sat on the bed watching a movie. Chalk it up as a little bit of business travel, in the midst of our other sorts of travel. . . . Next stop: Goa.