Kerala Backwaters

Wow. we are staying in a superb situation, a wonderful homestay on an island in the kerala backwaters, with no cars and fabulous people taking us all over this little place while they meet and greet all their friends who live here.

The thing 'to do' when you go to Kerala is to take a houseboat, right?  Oh, so, wrong.  We see these monstrosities chugging by every evening and every morning, with bored looking Indian and european travelers, and we see them moored next to our island, unable to get off, and we see them taking long distance photos of the wonderful sights we are seeing:  laughing children, moms scrubbing dishes and clothes by the water, school kids coming home in their handsome graceful uniforms, the postman riding his bike through the puddles, the goats munching under the laundry.  This is a great place. The island we are on is huge, it's 37 km around, takes about half an hour to walk across in the most direct option, probably hours to walk it lengthwise, and it's a maze.. it is penetrated by small canals, big canals and in the center, a lake. it's freshwater and the land is protected from the river by a low cement wall, and during high water it splashes up on to the dirt pathway that rings the island. all along the edge of this island are houses, churches and toddy shops, one deep, and immediately behind them, after each households useful coconut palms, pepper vines, chocolate trees, mangos, jackfruit etc etc, are acres and acres of beautiful open rice fields, huge fields with ripening grain right now.  There are cats and birds, no dogs, there are NO cars.  the largest path, 3 could walk abreast. Our hosts, Thomas and his sister Maria and brother and their spouses, are a large extended family who have been running this for about 15 to 20 years, and their goal is to share their lovely island in a way that creates jobs and harmony. and it's really fun.

We arrived by train to Allepey and took their advice, of coming up by tuk-tuk half an hour into the countryside.  our cab driver wasn't quite sure where to go so we saw a lot of muddy driveways and churches (it'd been raining for 2 weeks straight but now sunny) and then found the right place, a riverbank with a waiting canoe containing about 6 people in saris.  And a tranquil bearded guy who looks like a Jesuit priest or a saint who turned out to be, Thomas!  he actually let us blither a bit with each other about how do we get the canoe to come after us, then introduced himself.  he is so sweet and calm.

it's an interesting family. the family are originally syrian christians, who have been here for well over 1000 years, but a few are now catholic, one close family friend is born again and the matriarch's brother we learned is an episcopal priest who has retired from Boston to Pennsylvania! go figure.

most of the island including this family are christian rice farmers, there are many hindu familes also.  most people live pretty simply, they get up in the morning for example and brush their teeth next to the river and bathe there. but everyone also has a clean drinking water supply that they are actually using, in pipes by the river, and people seem pretty comfortable. most people have enough money to send their kids to the many private schools, and the most poor have a government school and one of our guides, Binu, was explaining about the kerala welfare system which offers discounted food and free health care to the poorest.  Everyone is a little reserved initially but pretty cheerful about our being there and when we go out on guided walks with Binu, one of the men there, a painter, and also with Thomas, we change from feeling like tourists, to honored paying guests who are welcome to be there. it's a really nice nice service that Thomas and his family have created, where the locals benefit from our curiosity and we get to see a lot. we went 4 km today, along canals, along the river, and later came home in the many public ferries, long roofed boats, very comfortable and fun.  we've also been ferried home by canoe from one of our evening walks, by Thomas in the front, another guy steering in the back, and both of them singing to us these neat call and response folk songs that the women used to sing in the fields to make the work of rice farming less boring.

Oh yeah and Binu. Binu is single, incredibly handsome, and recently converted to the Church of God so now he has a dilemma, at age 37, of how to find a wife educated enough for his taste and able to be enthusiastic about his future if he goes for the ministry.  He's full of surprises. He showed us how to make a kazoo out of a leaf, how to blow bubbles with the sap from a stem, how to make a necklace with a star on it from a single twig, how tomake a little purple flower stick to your shirt like a decoration.

The name of this place is Greenpalms, also called Thomas's homestay and it's in the township of Chennamkary which you get to by the ferry up from allepey, which takes an hour and a quarter to go just a few miles by zigging and zagging across the river, dodging those enormous hideous turtle like houseboats which are like suburbia gone wild... it's so totally something we'd recommend. today we got a great cooking lesson also from Thomas's mom, whose name we dont know we just think of her as tutu. to see her cooking with turmeric, coconut, her own garam masala spice blend, coconut oil galore, in woks and also on a wood burning stove, so much fun! we learned a lot about why the food we eat, tastes so very, very good.