Kochi and houseboats

Kochi has been quite an experience for us, and our homestay host Linda has had a lot to do with that.

She runs a 9-room place a 10-mimute walk from the tourist zone where she lives with her husband. She’s got a ton of local connections for all the things we wanted to see in this part of Kerala: houseboats, cooking classes, kathakali (local performing arts), and drivers. It was hard to keep her from filling up our days with expensive activities, so we had to push back a little bit arrived at a really enjoyable itinerary for our stay!

Our first day was to explore Fort Kochi, and we had a great time checking out churches, Jewish synagogues, and some bars and restaurants.

The liquor laws are tough here, just having repealed prohibition, but we found a few places to get some beer.

We mailed a ton of post cards home as Christmas cards. If you didn’t get yours, you can blame the Indian postal service. It has nothing to do with us forgetting about you, we promise!

Linda hooked us up with a great performance of kathakali, theyyam, and the local martial arts that we really enjoyed. It was a bit touristy but also quite nice.

Linda offered to give us a cooking demonstration while she prepared “beef” (water buffalo) briyani for 30+ guests, giving us step-by-step instructions that we hope to repeat when we return home. It was quite tasty!

Now it was my turn to get sick, but with no fever and responding to Tylenol and decongestant, I don’t think it’s anything serious. So we took a relaxing day, went to the mall to get new clothes (the Merino wool is too hot in this humidity, so we are switching to some much cooler synthetic clothes from Adidas and Clumbia). And then we booked a houseboat tour through the backwaters.

This is “the experience” of Kerala, so we had to do it. And Linda got us a driver and booked everything. It was quite a cool experience to sleep on the backwaters for a night.

On the way there, we saw some local fisherman pulling in their catch, thanks to our awesome driver who pointed out lots of interesting sights along the way.

Our houseboat was comfortable enough even if it was riddled with termites. We were constantly dusting termite poop from our feet and bedding. The front deck was nice with the best views, though the upper deck was also pleasant. We had a sizeable bedroom with ensuite full bathroom and a small dining room. It was nicer than I thought, but it’s not exactly luxury. Still, the food was amazing.

They stopped by a fish market and asked if we wanted to buy anything to add to our menu, and the tiger prawns are a local specialty and looked amazingly fresh, so we picked out a bunch. We will have to live on masala dosa for a week to make up for our extravagance (honestly, compared to prices back home, it was peanuts), but the onboard chef fried them up in some spices and they were incredible. But first we had to walk a ways to find a woman with scissors who cleaned and shelled the prawns for 40 rupees while her parakeet made fun of us in Malayalam. Good times.

The most comfy spot where we watched the world go by.

Cozy bedroom with air conditioning!

Steve’s spot…

Cool spiral staircase on the water tower.

Boat traffic on the backwaters.

Some of the houses along the coast.

Our sunset; we parked overnight and went for a short walk through rice paddies.

These plants were everywhere, clogging up the backwaters. Their roots seem to just float in the water, and don’t go all the way down to the ground.

We awoke to thousands of ducks quacking happily by us. Later we saw duck on the menu and wondered where it came from.

One more day in Kochi and then we are back on the bikes heading south towards Varkala! In the meantime, in a moment of weakness, I bought a drum! The idea of doing some drumming at some of our less interesting stops sounded good at the time, and it was a good price and has a good sound, but I have no idea how I’ll carry this on my bike…