Dispatch from Shirak: Week Two in India

Several years ago (2006) I read and saved a series of articles in the Seattle Times written by Carol Pucci about her trip to southern India. So for our second week in India we flew 3.5 hours southwest to the coastal state of Kerala for homestay visits and a backwaters cruise as Carol had done. Kerala is lushly green, tropical, and as different from our first week in India as you could get within the same country. I arranged a homestay with a family in a fifth generation house that had a separate cabin along a freshwater canal frequented by fishermen, ferries, other boaters, bathers, and women washing clothes and dishes. Highlights were a shower in the rain outside, breakfast at a neighbor’s simple home where two men went out in a boat, threw out a net, and caught our fresh shrimp for curried shrimp breakfast, and a great tour of the town of Kochi.

After two nights we headed to Alleppey, an area of rice fields, where we boarded an Indian house boat for an overnight cruise of the Kerala backwaters (rivers, canals, lakes). This felt like the ultimate indulgence; to be on our own two-bedroom boat with a captain, cook, and steward, for an incredibly small sum. I would have loved to share this adventure with family and friends. Around 3 pm a fishing boat pulled alongside and we bought five-inch freshwater prawns for dinner. Behind all the homes lining the waterways were rice fields. Our young cook told us that he had just spent two months (during slow season) helping his mom and dad plant their rice fields. He mentioned what hard work it is, a strain on the back and done in the gruelling sun.

Kerala is 35 percent Christian and there were wildly colorful Catholic churches everywhere, church schools, nunneries (ok, convents) and seminaries. There were also Hindus (45 percent), Muslims, and Jews. All the religious holidays were celebrated. We were there for the Feast of the Assumption and for New Year’s (Malayalam calendar- August 17).

The following day we stayed in a another home along a canal and spent a fun day touring their wonderful garden full of spices, getting lost on a long walk (few people were out as they were all watching boat races on TV), having a facial and pedicure, watching 40-person oar racing boats headed to the boat races, and their accompanying spectators in other boats, and then watching the final boat races on television from Alleppey where over 100,000 people had gathered for snake boat races pitting local groups (villages, churches, clubs) against each other. St Sebastian’s church, which we could see across the canal from our homestay, came in first in the third group in their 100-man snake boat. The village went crazy and fireworks went off. The next day we met several of the participants from St Sebastian’s including the driver and brother-in-law from our homestay. They were so excited!

The following day we drove on winding switch-backed roads east into the mountains to Munnar, famous for its tea plantations and spices. Our homestay was at a cardamom plantation. I learned more in the two days that we spent there about spices than I ever knew in my former life. The main source of income was cardamom but the plantation also grew coffee (Robusta and Arabica), cocoa, bananas (finger, red, plantains, Cavendish), mangos, jack fruit, oranges, peppers, figs, nutmeg, cloves, and vanilla beans. Bananas are the world’s largest herb, and a fruit. As I watched the monkey families playing in the trees near our room I asked if they picked the bananas when green and was told that if they did not, the monkeys would eat them and the two kilo (4.4 pounds) Malabar giant squirrel would eat the cocoa and figs.

Along with all these fruits and spices were huge bugs which included some noisy (almost deafening) crickets, moths, spiders, and praying mantises. (The female eats the male after mating. Yikes!) Mosquitoes were not a huge issue.

I flew home to Armenia two days later from Delhi.

Our homestays and boat cruise were arranged by Jos at www.keralagraman.com. I would highly recommend him. Our homestays with all meals averaged about $60 per night for two people. Round trip airfare from Delhi to Kochi was $140 per person.

Students at St Thomas School

Site of our shrimp breakfast

Catching breakfast shrimp

At Gramman homestay

Typical market in Kerala

On our houseboat

Typical canal scene. The man just

finished bathing.

Public ferry boat

Prawns we purchased for dinner from fisherman who pulled up alongside our houseboat.

St Sebastian church in background and 40 person oar-boat on way to race.

View from porch of our homestay

Toddy man in coconut tree retrieving nectar from flower. Nectar will ferment and create slightly alcoholic drink. Toddy man used to be "untouchable" but because he is so well paid he is now "touchable."