Transportation #4 and #5

We walked to the bus stop in Kumily, in order to get onto a state bus to Kottayam. We were told they left every half hour, so we didn't bother to make reservations ahead of time. Karla, who is from Chile, walked into the tourist station to get information while I looked around at the wide range of buses around us -- big comfy ones all the way to crowded ones with wooden benches. I pointed at the latter and said: "I am embracing Indian culture, but I don't need to embrace it THAT much."

Which preordained my fate, of course.

Karla came back, pointed at the benches and said: "That's our bus."

Deep breath. I got into self-survival mode, sharpened my elbows and threw myself onto the bus first to make sure I got a window seat. I got one (don't mess with an only child) but didn't realize that the seat I was on was actually one for three people. Jan -- of Andre the Giant fame -- was sitting next to me, and when he realized that he was going to have to move over, he said: "But this is for three Indians! Not Germans!" Suffice it to say, the journey was much worse for him than for me. I leaned out the window the whole time -- despite being warned by the friendly man in front of me that this might not be such a good idea since we would be cutting pretty close to other vehicles. The three men in front of us were all very friendly actually, though their English was minimal. They turned around at every stop and stated the name of the town for me, which I valiantly tried to repeat. Again, this was more fun for me than it was for Jan.

Despite the fact that the ride was a wee bit better than I might have expected -- and far better than it was for the thirty or so people standing the whole way -- four hours of this kind of travel got old pretty quickly. When we got out at Kottayam, the relief was palapable. But this was just a pit stop for us, as we were next going to hop a ferry to Alapuzha. We'd been told this was the nicest way to get there, but the dock itself was uninspiring -- a dirt parking lot and a jetty of concrete. Then the ferry itself arrived. It looked solid enough, but the thought of being jam-packed onto it for another four hours just made something in me snap.

I grabbed Peggy (a German student who is friends with some of the MF fellows, and joined our group) by the hand and announced: "We're going to go rent a boat." The first place we tried said this was impossible so late in the day since the boat would interfere with the fishermen's nets. Since the ferry was about to leave the dock, we didn't quite buy this. We walked into the next stop, where they happily offered us a boat for the mere price of $25.

Palm trees on the backwaters

Wow. We set out down a canal lined with palm trees, riding under manual drawbridges, yanked up with ropes by the people who lived on the side of the water. There were kids swimming, women doing laundry, men bathing. We kept going from side to side on the boat waving hello, tossing pens to those who asked, and taking photos. All of which turned out to be something of a problem since we were sitting on plastic chairs on the roof of the boat and any movement brought the whole thing listing far over to one side or the other.

Regardless, I can only say what Johanna said: "Everyone said that the backwaters were nice, but I never imagined they'd be this beautiful." These weren't canals like you see in Amsterdam or Venice -- they were much larger, the size of a serious river. On the sides were stone walls lining thin strips of land covered in palm trees. Beyond that were manicured squares of rice fields. The area is called "God's Own Country" and you understand the name instantly. Our boat moved slowly. (But still only took two and a half hours, which makes one wonder how fast the ferry traveled.) The sun began to set, and the sky turned pink and purple-grey, and the wind blew across the boat, and everything, everything in the whole world was alright.

Posted by karenceliafox at September 4, 2004 08:45 PM