By ferry through Kerala Backwaters

Mon 25 February

A long, hot walk into town for an agonisingly slow session on the www (world wide wait). The town is a mix of the ultra modern, the merely scruffy, and the crumbling old Keralan style of buildings with tiled, pointy roofs like Pagodas. Back via another oily temple where I sneak into the sanctuary, but am shooed out as soon as spotted. Keralan Hinduism seems to be of a simple Calvinist persuasion as there are few idols. But many incense sticks and brass lamps, for which they sell "oil offerings" in Mazola bottles.

Everyone I ask has a different opinion on 1) the time and 2) the point of departure of the state-run ferry boat to Allepuzha -  still, by the way, generally known as Alleppey, with the stress on the first syllable. The first problem is in making myself understood at all. Keralans, you see, pronounce "boat" as "bought", so "When is the bought to Alleppey?" (or "Alleppey bought it go when?" to put it in Indian pidgin) indeed doesn't make much sense. This difficulty is exacerbated by a common Keralan mannerism which involves responding with a little shake of the head. It's actually a sort of combined nod, shake, twist and flex that could be developed into a yogic exercise or a cure for RSI. Is it a yes or a no, or maybe just a maybe? It's hard to tell, especially when not accompanied by verbalisation. I must look it up in a Dictionary of Indian Body Language. Eventually I find a rickshaw driver with a steady head who knows his "boats" from his "boughts" and who claims to know for certain that it is 12.30, or thereabouts, (and has enough English to tell me). I agree his fee sans haggle, and we head out of town past the villas of the rich to a track alongside a weed-covered canal. There's no sign of life, just a foraging goat or two and some long-abandoned wreck of an old wooden boat in the far distance. 

Yes, you've guessed: this is the ferry. I am the first passenger to arrive with well over an hour to wait. I head for the front seat (we won't encounter any hairpin bends at breakneck speed) and check the location of the lifejackets just in case. Unlike the Munnar bus (or December's Calcutta tram) there is no "ladies only" sign, or if there once was, it has long since peeled off with most of the rest of the paint. So I go for a wander, shirtless for some air conditioning as it is very hot, 90 degrees F +.

This is a watery world, like the undrained Fens, or the Broads before anyone beyond Norfolk knew of them. The river is thick with quacking ducks - mallard-type, few drakes - and also with mauve-flowered water hyacinth, so thick the duck can waddle across them. It is hard to see how the old ferry will prise its way through. There's a footbridge over a tributary where someone is feeding what turns out to be crushed sea shells to the duck, then herding them towards the main river with the help of a second man punting a narrow black boat. One of them pulls a duck from the quacking melee and stuffs it, along with a bottle of mango juice, into a sack. Curried duck tonight. 

Beyond the raised river bank is a shallow mere with a boat out fishing, and a couple of brightly painted marshmen's cottages are perched along the bank; a woman does her washing in the river, thwack-thwacking her laundry against a stone quayside. I feel as if I've stepped into a Dutch old master landscape painting. 

As 1.30 departure time nears, a few figures appear along the tow path, and a couple of tuk-tuks rattle down and deposit passengers. The skipper takes his place in the wheelhouse on the roof, a hefty diesel grumbles into life, and the ferryboat laboriously executes a turn to head down west. I pay my fare of Rs. 9 to the conductor - that's 10p, not bad for a 3 1/2 hour boat trip. And so we head off for Alleppey, our first scheduled stop at a little staithe conveniently next to a hut labelled Toddy Shop. 

In the toddy shop, ferry waits outside

This is my chance to try the local hooch, so I go ashore and sit at a big table in the gloomy interior while they bring my glass of diluted and cloudy palm spirit. Meanwhile, someone has stripped to his lunghi and dived under the boat to pull a tangle of weed roots off the propeller  Then the engine starts again, I am summoned by the conductor, the engine bell rings (it is controlled from above by a clanging ship's telegraph system) and we head off downstream, gathering more and more passengers at each stop. This is a well-used service linking what are in effect marsh islands, only accessible by boat.

The narrow canal leads onto a broad waterway, and then to a lake which we cross towards the town. This is where we meet more and more "rice barges", the ungainly houseboats with rounded palm-thatch covered roofs which are the mainstay of the local tourist trade. As we approach Alleppey town up a narrowing waterway, a procession of these lumbering craft makes its way out, ready to moor up somewhere along the banks for a night of solitude. At least, that's the sales pitch. Tourism is now big business here, so let's hope Kerala has not pressed the self-destruct button.

Basic en-suite facilities guaranteed

Failing to find my first choice of guesthouse (it has moved) I wind up at the Venice Castle Homestay. In most ways it's much the best place I have stayed - a beautiful and spacious marble-floored house set in an exotic garden, not unlike our one-time home in Dar es Salaam. The bed feels luxuriantly soft and comfortable after two weeks on thin, hard mattresses made for Indian ascetics. The Venice name is not entirely fanciful, as I hope the photo shows.

Sign of the day