Up a lazy river.....

    Visited the famed Kerala ‘backwaters’ yesterday. The ‘boatman’ duly appeared at my guest house

Skimming the surface like a mosquito......

doorstep at 8.00am sharp, to escort me to the boat for my trip through the “backwaters”. I suspect that the real reason to pick me up personally was to avoid the possibility that I could be waylaid & grabbed away by the competition en route to his boat jetty location. Felt rather sorry for him, as I was the only passenger for the trip on a boat built with seven passenger seats. But with the knowledge that he could not be losing money (for me) and that with full loads during the fast approaching tourist season, he would be earning a handsome living. Of course, boat rides are likely only a 3-4 month occupation.

              Apparently, the 'backwater’ business is made up in two parts. One for resident Indian tourists, who rent mostly the large, over-nighting house-boats designed for wedding parties, corporate & youth groups etc., where meals are provided, drinking and loud music permitted. The other group, tend to be overseas foreigners who, like me, opt for the sedate 4 hour circuit through the nearby river system. The health the backwaters are currently in some threat from the more than 1000 large house boats that tour the area in terms of the diesel oil pollution leaking into the water plus from passengers who throw their plastic bags over board. My boatman had to stop a couple of times to unwrap plastic bags from the screw,         

            

Houseboat on the port quarter...

  The highly scenic freshwater rivers, bordered by coconut palms are an engineering marvel, as they are several feet higher than the surrounding rice paddies, especially so during and just after, the monsoon run-off season. The rather dense housing and narrow pedestrian track for fishermen and rice paddy farmers, is strung out along the man made ridges that separates the river and the paddies. I observed that a number of local residents of the small houses had erected plastic fences for some protection from the prying telephoto lenses of passing tourist boats. Local residents use the river for laundry, cooking, drinking water and bathing purposes and are clearly at risk if the river network gets polluted.

               Interesting to see the large and immaculate hospital boat doing its rounds of bank side villages. As I have previously noted, life expectancy in Kerala is fully 8 years greater than India as a whole.      

             I understand that the network of rivers comprises several hundred kilometres of water-way—of

Note that the river is higher than the rice paddies....

which I probably saw about twelve (4 hours x 3km). I was somewhat disappointed that my ‘cruise’ could not have been routed through narrower rivers of the system, despite my requests to leave the main routes. Anyway, opportunities may occur for another trip at towns further north.

          On a photographic note, I had much fun extending my point and shoot Lumix out from the boat and as low to the water as possible at the end of an extension pole. I am becoming a real fan of low-level picture taking. Great to capture a mosquitoe’s eyeview of the water. Perhaps I shall make low-riding my personal photo trade mark. 

                Throughout the backwater trip, Roy Orbison’s “Blue By You” kept going around in my head. For more than 30 years, I always thought the name of the song was “Blue Bayou”—bayou being the narrow inlets in the Mississippi Delta region. Yes, there are great similarities in these two worlds apart wonders---temperature, mosquitoes and humidity. Amazing how the sub-conscious mind makes links.