OUTSIDE THE BUBBLE

A day of leisure is rare enough when one is on tour, but to have more than one is a real treat indeed!

Yesterday (Thursday) before we left our mooring near the Thottappally Spillway, we visited a rural family homestead, a compact complex that seemingly contained everything needed to assure basic survival: several kinds of banana trees; mango; curry, allspice and cinnamon plants; chickens and a cowshed; fishing nets, and all manner of other plantings crowded into a plot not much larger than our lot in Shaker Heights. The family also had a small kitten, one of the few cats we’ve seen anywhere along the way. They also had satellite television and a DVD player!

The head of house and his wife demonstrated for us how to make coir, a substantial twine rope made from dried coconut fiber that has been soaked to soften it before being twisted into stout, course strands – a by-employment encouraged by the state and making good use of an abundant local commodity.

We also encountered a palm tree liquor guy who twice daily climbed a set of some ten palm trees in the area to collect liquid gathered from coconut buds and collected in clay jars suspended high in the trees, akin to how maple syrup sap is collected at home.

Then, back on board our two houseboats, we made our way slowly north to Pulinkunnu, debarking along the way both to visit a rural village and to see a long, narrow “snake boat” used in local annual river races (each paddled by a full complement of one hundred local villagers).

Our mid-day lunch was particularly spectacular, comprised of more than ten different spoon-sized bits of sweet, spicy and battered vegetables and even some freshly caught red snapper served on an ample banana leaf (making for minimal cleanup later, considering all the slicing and dicing that preceded the meal).

The weather all day was misty, cool and a bit rainy; but no matter: we enjoyed the “down time” enormously and are looking forward to another day of much of the same.

One of the biggest benefits of our Kerala extension has been the chance it has given the five of us to escape the “tour bus bubble.”

We had spent much of the previous two weeks observing India essentially through the window of our bus, avoiding eye contact when alighting to visit various sites (so as to minimize the imprecations of the aggressive touts selling souvenirs), even not greeting “anyone” with a cheery “Hello” because inevitably they wanted to lure you off to a shop somewhere.

Kerala has instead provided opportunities to walk through local villages, greet local residents and exchange wave after wave with those we float past on our houseboats – what a welcome change!

On our second day of cruising Kerala’s Backwaters (Friday), we debarked once in the morning to walk the water-soaked streets of a canal-side village to stand along the boundaries of a Hindu temple honoring Devi, a very popular female goddess, watching visitors from all over Kerala and elsewhere perambulate the Inner Sanctum while attendants set off booming fireworks and chanting voices provided ambient background “music.” The overall effect was quite magical!

In the afternoon we stopped again to walk along the canal to visit a local milk cooperative, a counterpart to another earlier stop at a distribution center where villagers could use ration cards to acquire a set quantity of rice, flour and kerosene, all provided by local state government programs. We even passed by a local Communist Party headquarters at one point; the only clue to the party’s presence, however, consisted of wall posters featuring the hammer and cycle – Big Brother was nowhere in sight!

As the day progressed, we shared the waterway with more and more houseboats, of all shapes and sizes, at times quite resembling the parade of boats along the Li River in Guilin, China.

Dileesh Kumar V, our local Trip Leader, feels the whole houseboat “industry” will flame out in another ten years or so. There are already some 500 boats floating around, and commercial tourism fostered by their presence has begun to transform local village economies. He feels it’s only a matter of time before the existing charm is compromised beyond recognition; we’re lucky to have come here at just the right time in this development process: our presence is accepted but not overly catered to, a difficult balance to maintain, I’m sure …

Saturday, quite refreshed, we drove back the two-and-one-half hours to Cochin to continue our tour. We stopped to visit a coir factory where the coconut fiber twine (using teak wooden looms originally installed by the British long, long ago) eventually ends up as thick woven mats used as flooring material.

In Cochin (also known as Kochi), early in the afternoon, we dipped our toes in the Arabian Sea, visited the oldest Christian church in India (where Vasco De Gama was initially buried in the sixteenth century; his remains have since been returned to Lisbon), hauled up Chinese-style fishing nets by pulling on heavy ropes, ate yet another delicious lunch at an outdoor café and eventually checked into our Le Meridian accommodations on the outskirts of town.

The early evening found us entranced, immersed in watching dancers apply stage makeup prior to a lengthy performance demonstration of Kathakali, a specialty of Kerala.

We followed up with dinner at a popular local hotel restaurant, again surrounded by “locals” and other visitors, feeling very much one with our cultural environment to a degree thought impossible only a short week ago.