Three weeks have flown by and we can hardly believe we only have a week left in India to explore the final state we’ll see this trip: Kerala. This part of India is perhaps most famous for the beaches and its backwaters (a series of lagoons and lakes which some people describe as the Venice of the East although I suspect the people that do this haven’t actually been to Venice).

For our first two nights in Kerala, we stayed in a homestay in Alleppey, which is similar to a bed and breakfast in the UK, whereby the owners (or staff appointed by the owners) live in the building with the guests, providing them with breakfast and giving information about the area as required. We felt a little guilty getting in after midnight, as the staff had to stay up and await our arrival, however, there wasn’t much we could do, based on having to take two flights and an Uber in order to get to Alleppey (as a side note, Uber advertised a fare of 1199 rupees, which is about £13, and then charged 2020 rupees, which is about £22, and despite several messages to their support team, this hasn’t been resolved, so whilst up until now I have always found Uber to be excellent, I would use a bit of caution with longer distance fares, particularly in India)!

The main activity we wanted to do in Alleppey was to explore the backwaters, 5-10 years ago, we would have done this by hiring a houseboat, where you can stay on the boat overnight, and sail by day, exploring the rivers. However, year on year, the prices of the houseboats have soared from once upon a time costing £15 a night, to now costing about £150 per night, which is more than we deem worthwhile, especially on our budget which we have to stretch to last 12 months, as we traverse the planet. Based on this, we opted to hire a Shikara, which is a small boat, with a chap who rows at the back, and up to four people relaxing in seats towards the front of the boat. We shared the ride with a retired gentleman from Norwich, who had been to India five times, often devoting parts of this time to volunteer work. As you can probably imagine, he proved to be an interesting travel companion who was able to tell us anecdotes and stories about his adventures in India.

Drifting around on the backwaters was somewhat relaxing, we saw a variety of different animals and birds, including several kingfishers (which we failed to successfully photograph). It was also nice to get away from the noisy streets to somewhere tranquil, however… moving around a still body of water, in a country where the sanitation typically ranges from below UK standard to non-existent, it proved to be difficult to get away from the stench of untreated sewage. In certain areas, it improved enough that we forgot about it, but towards the start and end of the ride, where we were nearest to populated areas, it was something we couldn’t help but be constantly aware of.

After a couple of days in our homestay, we moved onto a quaint little set of holiday apartments for a couple of nights, the room itself delivered beyond our expectations, as it lived up to a decent UK level hotel, with powerful air conditioning, a huge comfortable bed and thick, crisp bed sheets. Truth be told, there isn’t so much to do in Alleppey, we spoke to several people who all said the same – if we did the trip again, one or two nights would have been enough, however having such a comfortable room meant we could simply catch up on some sleep and relax. On a year-long adventure like ours, you quickly lose track of what day of the week it is, as every day can consist of similar things, getting up, exploring new areas, plenty of walking, speaking to new people, carrying your possessions for the year on your back, and whilst it is an amazing thing to do, you can find that several weeks have gone by without you actually stopping to rest. So a couple of extra nights in Alleppey gave us the rest we needed!

Kerala is a mostly dry state, in as far as very few places serve alcohol. Some higher-end hotels do, there are off licenses which you can queue up at certain times of the day, and, there is a single bar near Alleppey beach which has an alcohol license. As you can imagine, this place proves popular with tourists, so we popped in for a beer one evening, not too long after arriving, we got chatting to a group of travellers, who were also from the UK: Anthony, his partner Bethan and his cousin Tash. We ended up going to dinner with them and talking into the night – finding out about places we should visit later in our trip (lots of recommendations for Vietnam) and hearing about their adventures so far in India, from how to combat the dry-state limitations of Kerala to the problems that Anthony struggles in finding a hot curry in India (it turns out the Indians are so used to the British not wanting things very spicy, that even if you ask for spicy, they don’t take it very seriously, and make it British-spicy instead of Indian-spicy).

From Alleppey, we travelled up to Kochi where we had booked to spend our final four nights in Kerala. By far Kochi was the most touristy place we had seen in India, rather than seeing a couple of Western people per day, we instead were seeing Western tourists everywhere we turned, cafes full of Westerners drinking coffee and eating toasted sandwiches, shops selling Kelloggs Cornflakes, Cadburys Chocolate and other familiar brands that are known and loved in the UK. If this had been all we had seen in India, it would have been disappointing, but after almost a month, we were quite happy to have an easy place to deal with for the end of our trip. In the past, Kochi had been under the rule of both the Portuguese (until 1663) and the Dutch (until 1773)  of course it was later under British rule until 1947, and the influences from these times are still present as you walk around and see the architectures and place names. It is another area where really you only need a couple of days to explore, so with four days to kill we were able to be quite leisurely.

We had received a tip from an Australian couple in Goa, that if we wanted to get a beer, there was a bar we could go to which ignored the alcohol ban and would give you a beer providing you drink it discretely. We found said bar, and despite the chap working there already having spent 15 days in jail for illegally serving alcohol, he was still risking it all to make a quick buck (if there is something worth going to jail for, surely it is serving Brits beer).

It was at this bar that we made friends with a couple from Tel Aviv, Ravit and Amitai. It was interesting to hear first hand about what life is like in Israel, the good and the bad and to enjoy a beer served under the table. Whilst we were chatting with them, we mentioned that we had made friends with three people a few days ago and that one of them, was struggling to find a hot curry in India. They laughed. They too had met someone with the same dilemma. They asked what the person’s name was, Anthony we said… Anthony!? they shouted, travelling with his partner and cousin and, of course, it was the same person. Ravit and Amitai had met them in one city, we had met them in another city and now were are sharing drinks in a different city. We had stayed in contact with Anthony, Bethan and Tash, and happened to know they’d be in Kochi the next night, so we all met up in our new favourite, beer selling, local! It is funny how often these sorts of things seem to happen when travelling, we were joined by a friend who was staying with us in Kochi called James, from Australia, who once went backpacking and over the course of a series of low probability events, ended up sharing a beach hut in Goa with a stranger, which turned out to have been born on the same day, in the same private hospital ward as him. What are the odds of that?

The conclusion to each of our posts seems to be the same: Kerala was once again different to anywhere else we’ve been to in India. We’ve seen: the dirty, busy streets of Delhi; the highly polluted streets of Agra home of the Taj Mahal; Jaipur the red city with its famous Amer Fort; Pushkar with its hippie-like vibe, Udaipur with its beautiful lakes, Mumbai with a strong British stamp as you walk through the streets, Goa with the parties and cows on beaches and Kerala with the backwaters, Portuguese/Dutch influences and high levels of Western tourism. In order to continue our adventures, we have to fly from Kochi to New Delhi (so we can catch a flight from Delhi to Hong Kong). The flight from Kochi to New Delhi is three hours, which again highlights how big India is and helps to explain why the country changes so much as you move between different cities and states. We’ll be sad to say goodbye to India, we feel we have finally got somewhat to grips with the country, understanding what to do and how to tackle each day. We’ve made some great friends, from India, Israel, Australia and the UK and eaten lots of amazing food. That said, we are equally excited to continue our adventures into South East Asia: starting in Hong Kong for a few days and then heading to Vietnam.

As a final note, the image below shows each of the main cities we have visited in India, along with how we got between each (green for taxi, blue for overnight train and red for flight). The ratio of flights we have taken in India has been rather large, but we anticipate this will go down dramatically once we have arrived in Vietnam. We had attempted to take a lot more train journeys in India, but it turns out that the tickets all book up well in advance – we attempted to make bookings whilst in India, a week or so ahead, and there was simply nothing available.

 

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