Hi All
Saturday morning we took off for southern India. We flew from Bangalore to Cochin (Kochi) on the coast.
Then took a car to Alleppey which took about 2 hours. Our driver, Mr. Johnson, dropped us at our house boat about 1 pm.
After we were underway, the crew fed us fresh fish, rice and some curry sauce for the rice.
We cruised some of the back water canals and then came out into a big lake. It is fresh water and not too deep. They have built dikes everywhere to create rice fields, thus making it look a lot like the Sacramento Delta.
We stopped at one island and bought prawns. Later that night the crew fixed them for our dinner. The house boat had two airconditioned bedrooms, a nice sitting/dining area at the front and a kitchen at the back. We had a 4 man crew.
That evening we tied up and spent the night on one of the waterways. The next morning after breakfast they dropped us at a dock and our car and driver was waiting for us.
It was then off to Kovalum. It turned out to be a four hour drive on narrow twisty roads with BIG trucks, BIG buses, lots of cars, motor bikes and scooters and of course the assorted cows, dogs, and lots and lots of people by the road side. We averaged only 22 miles per hour. Thus, when we started out from Alleppey and I saw a road sign that said 180 km (108 miles) to Kovalum I thought it would only take us maybe a little over 2 hours.
Annika and Auggie gave in to the long ride and took a nice nap in the back of the car
We stayed at a very nice beach resort in Kovalum called UDS (initials for some big chain of hotels).
It had 3 pools, 2 restaurants, room service, etc. We spent a little time in the pool then went to watch the sunset over the Arabian Sea.
The next morning it was pool time again before starting out on another tiresome car trip to Kanyakumari on the very southern tip of India.
Fortunately, it only took 2 1/2 hours. When we got there we saw a memorial built to M. Gandhi. They had just finished making repairs to it, because it was damaged in the big tsunami of Dec 2006. Apparently, there were 1,200 casualties in the district.
Gandhi Memorial Kanyakumari
"On this spot were the ashes of Mahatma Gandhi kept here on 12th February 1948 before immersion"
We also took a rather scary boat ride to an island just off the tip. Auggie got real scared and cried all the way across and back!
Our final activity was to go down beach and put our foot in the water.
From this point we could look to the left to see the Bay of Bengal, straight ahead to the Indian Ocean and to the right to the Arabian Sea. Pretty cool!
Tuesday morning we took the car for about 45 minutes to a town just north of us and caught a train back back to Cochin. It took 5 hours. It was an interesting trip. Helen had booked us reserved seats in First Class.
From Cochin we flew home to Bangalore.
More later.
John
This map is off the web and the route in red has nothing to do with us, but it does show Bangalore (Karnataka), Cochin, Alleppy, Trivandrum (Kerala) and Kanyakumari (Tamil Nadu)
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