Black Waters. Review on Alleppey

This is specifically for the Over night house boat ride in an around Alleppey. I wish all will read the review before planning any trip for Kerela.

I planned a 6 day long vacation including travel (by train) for kerela. This included 3 days in Munnar and 1 day in the house boat at alleppey.

Munnar is really a wonderful place with nice weather, nice people and an ambience of a true hill station, not to forget the lush green mountains all along with every bit of them covered with tea plants. You can read other reviews about Munnar and find out it’s really a place worth visiting.

Well, after staying in such a beautiful place for 3 days I started for Alleppey. We were 6 people (3 couples) and booked a 3 bedroom house boat for Rs. 12000/- for us. Indeed an amount of 4000 (per night, per couple) made us to carefully think over this option initially, but we spoke with our tour operator (Cozy Tours) and they convinced us about the facilities in the boat. And the feeling of traveling in water all night thrilled us, to go for it.

Normally the check-in time for such boats is 11:00 AM and check-out at 9:00 AM next day. They keep 2 hours for house-keeping. But since it was foggy in the morning we started at around 7:15 AM from Munnar. We had our return train to board at 10:00 PM from Kottayam, so we have decided to at most by 8:00 AM next day. Since we were quite excited about the house boat stuff we asked the driver to speed up. And he was driving at 80 Kmph on hilly tracks.

We could check-in at 1:00 PM. And on the boat no body understood any other language than Malyalam. We asked the driver to tell them that we want to get down at 8:00 because of our train. (We were thinking to utilize the maximum time we had on the boat)

The journey by cab was tiring and hot so we thought of taking a bath. But there was no water in the bathroom. Somehow we explained them about it. And they supplied us the water. Nobody even served drinking water in the rooms; we had to explain them in out sign language for this.

They started the boat took us into the back waters; I was thinking that now we will experience the real Kerela. However, after some time of ride they anchored the boat somewhere in a village and all of the 3 members went somewhere in the village. We asked them “where are they going”; they explained that they are going for lunch. BTW, there were nice paddy fields around and I got some opportunity to take some photographs. They returned after an hour. Till then we were dying of hunger. Then all of then went inside the kitchen for preparing lunch for us. So the boat didn't move a bit for next half-an-hour. Then we finished our lunch and went to the upper deck to see the view. It was 4:00 PM by then. They moved a bit and stopped again after some time and went somewhere. They refused to understand our questions of where they are going and came back only at 5:00 PM. Till then we were just thinking that anyway the night will be the great time and we all will be awake to experience the beauty, fighting over who will sleep on the deck.

They came back at 5:00 and we started the journey. The next 1- 1.5 hrs was the best time of the whole ride. Where we could see the lifestyle of the inhabitants of back waters, do some nice photography, and watched the sun-set. And as soon as the sun went off, they anchored the boat at a nearby place. We thought this must be for some evening tea etc. We asked them for tea, they replied ''no tea'' only ''lunch'' and ''dinner''. We got down from boat to the village nearby in search of tea shop, but couldn't find any. And when we returned we could see nobody on the boat, we found that they all are inside the kitchen. We asked for tea again explaining that we have paid a huge amount for this boat. They agreed to prepare tea but explained that people who come there give good tip to them (And surprisingly they could explain this very easily in English to us).

Then we came to know that the boat will be parked here for the whole night as they can't ride in nights. BANG!!! All my dreams of wonderful night were shattered, sleeping on the deck and playing ''Do lafzon ki hai...'' on my harmonica all night.

We got down and saw some other house boats parked nearby, most of them were occupied by foreigners, and we saw the boat people serving them drinks and nice snacks ( Off course they must have paid heavily followed by a huge tip for these goodies).

We came back and some how passed the time playing antakshari and stuff. Since it was hot inside the rooms, we decided to be awake for the whole night and enjoy at the deck, the best we can.

Dinner was served at 9:00 and this was slightly better then the lunch we got. (Or we were so starving by then, that we found it tasty). We finished the dinner and resumed our games, which we played till 11:00 PM. Though there were lots of mosquitoes, but the nice breeze was helping us to keep them away. At 11:00 the boat guys came and covered the whole boat with a tent, and kept their beddings on the deck. This made us understand that they are going to sleep here, and we decided to move to our rooms (4000Rs per night). Now since none of us was in a good mood, we asked them to take us back at 5:00 AM, as we have a train to board at 7:00.

Somehow we passed the night amidst suffocation, humid-heat and mosquitoes and became ready to leave by 4:00. They started the boat to take us back.

Now came the only second good part of the ride. We watched the beautiful sun-rise from the boat and finally came back to earth. They didn't serve breakfast because it is too early they only serve it at 7:00AM.

And even after all this when we were leaving all of the guys assembled around us asking for tip. But nobody of us was in a mood to move their hands to their wallets.

So that was the whole story about the so-called 22hrs ride along the heart of kerela (Venice of east) etc.

I will not recommend anybody to take such an overnight house boat in kerela. If you want to experience the backwaters, and lives of people there, it is far-far better to take a 2-3 hrs ride in the backwaters. I think there are some trips like this by a steamer or ferry. That will relieve you of all the ''hospitality'' of the house-boat fellows and will be far less burden on your pockets.