Hi friends....
I would like to make this short...but, let me see how it goes once I start writing..!!
Recently (April 1st week), I happen to visit Alleppy to check out what people say..the great house boats. And see what happens after I landed (by road though) into this city.
Arrival
I arrived here by road, started from Munnar at bout 8am and the drive is about 4.5 hours. The curvy roads from Munnar itself will take half of your energy away (even if you travel by an AC car) and if you are one of those, who has problem traveling on ghat roads and curvy roads, make sure you carry a lemon and a couple of vomiting tablets, seriously..!!
Once we reached Alleppy, the driver directly drove us to a House Boat agency, where a representative joined in our car and all of us reached the lake, where our boat is parked.
Journey Starts
Once we reached the house boat, the agent introduced us to his ''crew''. A Captain (who is wearing a lungi), a service boy (again lungi and banian) and cook(again a lungi, thats a standard here...but, would say, better dressed than his Captain :-)). Wait...this is just a start. We started asking them about the details of the boat, the journey time ..etc and then, to our shocking, none of the three crew members know any language except Malayalam and we don't know that language.
Then, our luggage was kept in a ''Bed Room'' and we were offered a mineral water bottle on arrival. So far, so good. The timing is about 1.30pm. We wanted to have a face wash, entered into the bath room, so dark out there and searched and searched and searched for the switch. Then came the second shock...There will be no Power till late evening and that’s how it is in house boats...came the answer from Captain.
Somehow, recovered from this shock, went to bathroom and opened the tap...and here's the third one..Tap water is RED, mixed with Mud, we somehow explained in sign language to the crew about the problem, then they did some magic to turn the flow in to BROWN, so we told ourselves to live with it (by the way, the water tastes as salty as it can get).
Lunch Time
After half an hour or so, cook asked us ''Veg'' or ''Non-Veg'', we told him ''Veg''. Then, he started telling some nice 3/4 south Indian curry names, we listened to them curiously and asked him, how long its going to take to prepare all of these? He said, they are ''Ready''. Surprising?? Better not to be. Then they stopped the boat immediately close to a shore.
We told him to get the food immediately as we are hungry and sweating in the heat, without any fan. He got us the food. No need to wonder, its cold, tasteless..papads are made like pooris and we had to limit ourselves with half stomach. Luckily, there are some fresh bananas and we banked on them for our lunch. A total of two hours is gone into this whole lunch episode and the boat is stopped for the entire duration.
Evening Ride
After Lunch, the crew had their lunch, cleaned up their plates and the bowls in the same ''Back Waters'' and at around 3.30pm, they started the boat again (so far, only half an hour journey in the boat). They drove for about 1.5 hours in the water, where we get to see how the villages on the banks of backwaters look like and how their daily life is... There are ''boat stops'' just like we have city bust stops, which is kind of interesting.
Sharply around 5.15pm, the boat came to a halt. They are not supposed to run house boats in the waters after this time, because the fishermen want their piece of mind (and water) too..!! We were hungry by this time and asked them whether they can prepare any snacks for us...phat came the reply, in half English and half Malayalam, something it sounded like ''they never heard these words snacks before''. Cook again asked us, what would like in the dinner, we immediately told chapati and some curry (since we had enough rice in the afternoon)
Night starts
It was 6.30pm, mosquitos are playing with our bodies and the crew had hard time understanding ''what a mosquito'' is. Finally they understood our sign language, and got us a ''Tortoise Coil'', which became a life saviour for us at that point. It's 7pm, still there are no signs of power(current). They told us that, power will come only after 7.15, 7.30pm. Do you want to know the reasons? I am sure, you would like to. They had a 20 meters long electric wire, through which they get power from near by house and provide power to the boat. Since its illegal to use household power for business use, they wait till it gets dark and all nearby village offices go back to their homes (won't they know otherwise?? :-)).
Current came at 7.30pm and dinner was ready by 8.30pm. What are we doing all this time on the boat?? Nothing, just chatting with mosquitos and looking around people of the villages, washing their clothes, taking head bath, cleaning their plates...all in the same water? Don't believe me? Go check it out..!! We had dinner, lucky to have one curry good out of 3 made and finished the same.
Sleep?
Its hot April and its sea shore and no signs of fresh air. All we have to depend is A 10 inch wide table fan, angled at the bed, which will not even rotate. We got the mosquito coil put near our head side of the bed and beared the blunt of mosquitos eating our legs... You have to save one part or another and we choose our ''head side part''.
Morning journey
Got up in the morning, 7'o clock and the power is gone. Brushed up with mineral water, we didn't have courage to take bath in that dark bathroom with brown water..so we choose to postpone bathing till we get out of that boat. By 8am, our famous cook prepared Poori as breakfast and needless to say (and some of u might of guessed it), they came like ''Papads''. The boat started its reverse journey, back to the shore and by 10am, we are back to the beautiful ''Land''.
Summary
What's the moral of the story? To me, lots of questions went through my mind. How these house boats are attracting tourists? Does all house boats the same? Luxury ones may not be, but those are expensive 10,000 onwards for a night (and ours is 5,000 a night)..!! Readers can comment if you have more details here.
Will I recommend this journey to any of my friends? Ans: Are you kidding?? No, never. Then, you all might ask me about this: I really want to enjoy back waters, how do we do that? Well, very simple...Go take a backwater resort, opt for a decent one with AC room. Check in there, and get onto their passenger boats, they take you on a cruise for about 3/4 hours after lunch and bring you back before mosquitos bite. Then, you can relax in your hotel and have some good food. So, you got luxury as well as the backwater ride..!! Sounds good? Take my word, you will be lucky if you do that.
Enjoy your next journey to Kerala. Comments are very well appreciated and will be used to improve my next review. Thanks in advance..!!
Cheers,
Shiv
