Alleppey backwaters

We walked through Alleppey, making two purchases worth 50p each. I found that I had left our kettle lead at the last hotel, so this was one of them. Christine had given away our antihistamine cream for a little girl called Irena, and this she replaced also. Alleppey is a wonderful working town not spoiled by tourism. There are so many small specialised shops it is easy to find anything you need. It is also clean, not smelly at all considering the presence of canals and fairly civilised ( apart from being dry).

We eventually reached the office of Kerala Kayaking and booked an early morning session for tomorrow, then a four hour cruise through the Alleppey backwaters in a small powered vessel for this afternoon.

We were taken outside the town by tuk-tuk and then walked with the boatman for about half an hour through coconut tree shaded villages just above water level to our boat.

We cruised through canals large and small, sometimes on our own, sometimes in the company of fleets of converted rice barges. These were of many types, the oldest where the planks were stitched together with coire rope then waterproofed with tar, the youngest made from welded steel plates. Apparently at 17:30 all these boats have to moor at the sides and the waterways become the domain of fishermen.

Sometimes the sides of the canal stretched away in acres of paddy fields, sometimes they were tree lined with bright blue kingfishers with red beaks grabbing fish from the waters. Some trees were home to scores of cormorants.

We made two stops, one where we walked to a church which incorporated the birthplace of a local catholic saint, famed throughout the world whom we had never heard of. The other at a canal side teashop where the cooking implements like everything else in the area were washed in the canal. For all that the coffee and tea tasted fine.

We returned to the A.J.Park hotel, then walked to the Harbour Restaurant near the beach for grilled Seerfish ( called Kingfish here) and chips and beer as it was that rarity in Alleppey, a licensed restaurant. Returned by tuk-tuk for an early night because we are being picked up at 06:25 tomorrow morning.