Alleppey, set, go!

(Written 18.00, 09.10.2013)

I am currently watching the Sun-God descend in very attractive fashion as the houseboat is being docked for the night. A lot of hype had been created around the Alleppey Backwaters houseboat. At the beginning, surrounded by murky-looking waters and grey clouds, I was not on board with the concept. This feeling, however, was eradicated when we hit the Alleppey canals. There was a particular period during which I was steering the boat, old Hindi songs were blaring, the sun was beaming down on the palm trees either side of the canal, and I started to understand the joy of this life! The food that they cooked on the boat was really nice too - some completely new dishes to me. They have this great system in which each boat cooks a few dishes in bulk, and then they share between the boats. The experience has lived up to the hype so far! (The abundance of insects is not ideal, and has got me smacking myself in a frenzy trying to reduce the biting population.)  

After reaching the hotel yesterday (day before houseboat day), I made some friends! An Irish couple, an Australian woman and their funny tour guide, who was very unsuitably named Charles. We went for a boat ride this morning to an island called Pathiramanal. As we got off the boat without the guide it felt like the beginning of a horror movie. Luckily we were back on the boat before anything could go wrong. As we all know, in the absence of a black person I would have been first to go! That being said, the scene I currently find myself in also resembles a cabin in the woods...

Fun fact-ish: the captain of the boat told me that there are 1500 boats on the Alleppey Backwaters!