Into the Monsoon

We arrive at the Goan airport a little early, and wait for our flight. As we’re waiting we order mango lassis and ras malai from a “dairy bar” stand inside the airport. We’re pretty nervous---we have a connecting flight in Chennai that leaves exactly 35 minutes after our flight from Goa arrives. The woman at the check-in desk promises that everything will make it (us and our checked bags), but we can’t be sure.

Our plane boards precisely on time. There are only about 15 or so people on the plane, and we’ve been seated up front so we can get out quickly to run to our other flight. About twenty minutes into the flight—once we’ve taken off—we experience some horrifying turbulence.

Now, let me tell you. I love to fly. I love the roaring sound of the engines as they start up, the incredibly fast speed of the plane soaring down the runway, and the sudden feeling of being in the air. I’ve had a few rough flights---including a near-miss landing at the Tri-Cities Airport--but nothing that really made me feel afraid. But this flight terrified me.

In the air, we experience winds that push our plane down suddenly---I literally fall forward, out of my seat, as the plane sinks. The captain whizzes the plane back up, but a few more times we are seriously shaken. It is not until the end of the flight that he apologizes for the rough ride, due to monsoon weather. Obviously! What were we thinking? Flying into south India at the peak of monsoon season?

By the time we land, I hate flying. But, tough luck! I have the transfer flight to Kerala (even further into the monsoon) and then the flight back to Delhi, and of course, the 27 hour flight home (including transfers and such). We run out of the plane, completely confused. The cabin crew, guards, and airport staff are really no help. Finally, we find the transfers sign, and head back through security, and make our plane to Kerala—with a few minutes to spare.

The flight to Kerala is not as bad, but it still shaky and rough. My poor stomach ulcer, which has been mostly fine during our journey, is burning tremendously, and I know I’m going to have to take a lot of medicine to make up for this. But I sit back, breathe deeply, and keep my eyes closed, counting down the time until we land. The second journey feels tenser, because the captain doesn’t talk to us at all and even forgets to tell the crew we’re landing until about 5 minutes before we’re on the tarmac.  He apologizes, and says he was distracted by paying attention to the weather. Awesome.

But, despite the harrowing travels, we make it. Our bags are almost the first ones out too. Perfect. We grab our things, get our prepaid cab, and head out into the humid and cool Kerala night.

The trees lining the streets are tall, but it is too dark to really see much else. Our driver gets lost trying to find our hotel---a backpacker place called John’s Residency. Instead he tries to leave us at the doors of a glamorous, ritzy (and far too expensive) place. We ask for directions to John’s, and finally I convince the driver just to call John. We eventually find the guest house, set back on a little street off the main road in Ernakulum. It is clean and airy, with shiny marble floors. Our room is simple, but large. We curl up on the sheets, wrap our shawls around us, and fall asleep.

The next day, we decide to have John call around to the houseboat companies he works with to get several prices. The company where we pre-booked (but not pre-paid) for our houseboat--CoCo Tours--is not returning our calls. We leave John to calling as we stroll out onto the streets for breakfast.

Ernakulum is a busy borough inside of Cochin. Despite this, the streets are clean and relatively small, and the surrounding environment is unbelievably lush. On our way to find a restaurant (we’re looking for the Lonely Planet recommended Grand Hotel’s restaurant), we come across a beautiful and sprawling park. We circle around, looking at the tall, glassy malls and colorful, painted houses. Unlike anywhere else we’ve been, people are up and about at 8 in the morning. Of course, it was a deep dark at 7:30 pm last night, so I suppose they need an early start to their days.

We never find the Grand Hotel or its accompanying restaurant, but we do come upon a nice looking place called Kanai Thali House. We stop in and have a traditional Kerali breakfast. I have an oonthapam (like a rice-flour griddle cake), and Cindy has a vegetable curry. These go perfectly together. In addition, they bring us a spicy mustard-like coconut sauce. I also have masala tea (chai). It’s amazing.

After eating, we head back out to the hotel to hear the prices. I also finally get in touch with the CoCo Tours company. Since we’ve been corresponding with them, and know their boats are eco-friendly, we decide to go with them. Also, their prices really are the best. So we book a cab to Aleppey (or Alappuzha) and head on our way to the Kerala backwaters.

The ride is a bumpy hour and a half. We make it to the CoCo Houseboat stall and sit down with the owner, Mr. George. We finalize details and pay for our boat, then head out—luggage and all—on an autorikshaw straight through the jungle. (Okay, this may be a slight exaggeration—there was a small path, but really, it felt like we were driving straight through the jungle).

We arrive at a dock with several beautiful Kerali houseboats---large boats with thatched roofs and open foyers. We jump over the water to the first boat, then crawl across two more boats, and finally come to our boat. It is beautiful.

The furniture in the foyer is a deep burgundy, ornamented with little golden flowers. A large fruit basket sits atop a dining table. We are led to our room in the center of the boat. It is clean and elegant. A breeze blows off the river over us. We settle in and prepare for the ride.

We first enter the enormous Vembanad Lake, a flat, rippling body of water that seems to extend into forever. In the dreary monsoon drizzle, everything appears gray but beautiful. Water plants float along its surface, and canoes with fisherman ease past us every once in a while. Surrounding the lake are endless rows of palm trees, coconut trees, mango trees, banana trees, and more. A cool breeze keeps the air cool as we watch the scenery pass from our open cabin.

We eventually come to a long bridge-like wall built through part of the lake. We dock for lunch, and out of a small gray concrete building come a fisherman and his wife. Our driver asks if we want to buy any tiger prawns or fish, but we decline. For lunch, we have Kerali fried fish, fresh cucumbers, rice, poppadums, and a green bean curry.  The fish is just-caught fresh, and the spices are reminiscent of Thai food---coconut, mustard, and basil. It’s delicious. After lunch we continue on our way.

The journey is mostly uneventful in precisely the way we need it to be. The air blows over us, a slow rain pours out of the sky every so often, and the lush trees languidly pass by us. Beautiful bright blue, white, or orange birds occasionally dive into the water to retrieve an unlucky fish. Cows (we call them jungle cows) rest on the small bridges connecting the various village islands. Every so often a coconut falls from a tree and splashes into the lethargic water. It truly is a paradise.

At some point we are served an interesting snack of bananas fried in mustard seed and cumin, with masala chai. It’s quite interesting.

Before nightfall, we dock at our driver’s house. As we pull to the small bridge, I can hear him say “Americans” followed by enthusiastic shouts in Malayalam (the language of Kerala). When we dock, we are suddenly surrounded by a large group of small children. One of them introduces herself as the driver’s daughter, and asks if she can show us her church a little ways down the island. She is the only person who can really speak English, but her English is impressively good. She tells us that she does well in school and wants to be a doctor someday.

As we walk down the narrow footpath between the river and the rice paddy fields, she asks us about ourselves. Are you married? I, of course, answer yes---it would be impossible to explain why I’m a 26 year old woman who is unmarried, as most women here are married before they are out of their teens (and it is a status they carry with great pride and achievement). However, when she asks if I have children I tell her no, to which her reply is a deep and sorrowful “I’m so sorry.” It’s almost funny, except that she is incredibly sincere.

We continue on to her church, a Christian church (Catholic) that is painted a vibrant pink and towers over the small village houses nearby. It is quite beautiful, and somehow strange. She shows us the playground and tells us about going to church and school every week. Her school is in “the city,” which is across the river and somewhere down to our right, through the rice fields. She tells us she rides her bike there every Monday-Thursday.

We return to her home, a small concrete structure with an open-air front room. She brings us chairs to sit outside, and we sit while the entire neighborhood gathers around us. First, all of our driver’s family—his children, his wife, and his mother. Next, the neighbors and their children. Finally, the neighbor’s friends even make their way down. We sit in the chairs while everyone smiles and stares at us excitedly. The young girl is the only person who can speak English, and she half-way interprets for the handful of people standing around us. After a while, it begins to rain slightly, and we thank them all for letting us share their home and head back to our boat. There, we eat a dinner of vegetable curry, fried okra, rice, and chapatis. It is early—only 8:30, but the outside world is an endless black.

We take a mango to our room, cut it with a knife borrowed from the kitchen, and eat the juicy fruit from the peel. After cleaning up our sticky mango mess, we slide under our mosquito net and drift off to sleep.

We wake up late the next morning---at 8:00 am. Our air conditioner made our small room quite cold, so we kept waking up. Our breakfast is waiting for us—a curried omelet with vegetables and nearly a loaf of toasted bread with butter and pineapple jam, along with freshly cut pineapple. Unfortunately, due to my ulcer, I can’t have the pineapple, but I do attempt the jam (which goes over quite well!). We eat, go back to sleep, and abruptly awaken at 10 am when the boat engine turns on. Off we go.

We meander through narrow canals between villages, watching the beautiful brightly painted houses slide by us. Every once and a while a church rises up from the scenery, but mostly it is just trees and rice fields. For lunch we again have fried fish, but different kinds of vegetable curry, and rice. After lunch, as I’m sitting in our room gathering my things, I see a small speckled snake swim through the water in front of our window. I excitedly shout for Cindy and we try to take pictures of it as it rests its head above the river. After it swims off, we return to the main cabin.

During lunch, we give our driver 600 rupees to go into town to buy us three large beers. He returns right after we’ve eaten and we crack open a Bullet Extra Strong IPA. The perfect accompaniment to our lazy afternoon.  Later we have a snack of what seems to be bananas, potatoes, and onions mashed together and fried (it’s pretty good!). 

Sometime in the afternoon we stop at a larger village to look at a big, beautiful church. Our driver also shows us some artisan shops, and we trek back and forth through the mud of the village’s one narrow footpath. Then on we go.

We dock before dark. An adolescent appears at our boat, and suddenly we find ourselves on a canoe ride through the river. It’s a very low, long canoe that ripples with the water. We’re a little uneasy, but the ride itself is peaceful. We pass closely by the strange plants growing up from the water, and I notice several have small purple flowers. We return to our boat, and tip the canoe driver. We drink another beer, and I fight with the flies over the bananas in the fruit basket.

As dark begins to settle in, we eat dinner—delicious steamed vegetables, a “salad” of cucumber, tomatoes, and onions in a lemon-style sauce, and rice. We finish our last beer and head to our room with our nightly mango. Tomorrow brings a new adventure and the start to our last excursion in India. We’ll stay one more night in Ernakulum, then head off to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Despite our grand time, I am looking forward to returning home.

 

Until then,

 

Namaste!