Backwards down the backwaters

Backyard backwater elephant
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Once we left Varkala and made it through our crazy temple procession experience, we hopped on an 8 hour ferry ride to Alleppey.  Touted as the Venice of India, it is a small town built on canals off of the backwaters in Kerala.  The boat tour was much longer than it needed to be and had we rented a private houseboat (which I highly recommend) it would have been much faster.  However, Alleppey is the hub for boat rentals and since we were coming from Kollam (via Varkala) we only had the ferry as an option if we wanted to ride via boat.  It was slow and did get tiresome toward the end, but for the most part it was an incredible experience floating along the backwaters watching people live a completely different way of life than anything I've ever witnessed before.  The backwaters are the main source of food, filled with fish, jellyfish mollusks and shellfish, as well as the place to bathe, clean dishes, wash clothes, deposit trash and is a main transport route for fishermen, villagers and tourists alike.  It is incredible that one body of water can mean so much to so many people.  The water is very shallow.  At it's deepest men are still able to keep their heads above water while standing.  This makes for very dingy water.

One of the beautiful houseboats that you can rent complete with a staff and sleeping quarters
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As we floated past the villages small school children waved and blew kisses to us as if we were celebrities.  It was really adorable.  As we waved back, reluctant smiles would come across the adults faces and some joined in on the greetings.  We saw men holding meetings, women cooking and tending to their homes, fishermen gathering their catch, boatmen hauling stacks of coconut husks and Westerners enjoying the high life on opulent houseboats with private chefs and cold beers.  Life seems so good when you can float along and watch it go by.

A man transporting coconut husks
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Just as the sun was going down we arrived in Alleppey.  The Venice of India is a term that is so loosely used I'm not sure that it applies to anything other than the fact that there are canals and waterways that connect the city.  It is small, congested and didn't appear to have much to do other than visit a few houses of warship and catch a boat out of there.  I would not recommend spending more than a day there and only to catch a boat down the backwaters.  Since we did it backwards, we spent the night and then hired a car to drive us 4 hours to Kumily where I found paradise!