SLOW BOATS IN INDIA
Slow Boats In India - Luxury Travel Magazine
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Slow Boats In India | |||||
| By: Hilary Doling, Issue 30 – Autumn 2007 | |||||
| (Alappuzha, India) | |||||
| ALAPPUZHA IS THE VENICE OF THE EAST WHERE RICE BOATS, NOT GONDOLAS, DRIFT THROUGH THE SLEEPY SOUTHERN INDIAN BACKWATERS, A WORLD AWAY FROM THE MAYHEM OF MUMBAI. | |||||
| Our rice boat drifts out into the middle of Lake Vembanad. Everything is a Whistler watercolour of muted blues, and it is hard to see where sky and lake meet. Distant fishermen in spindly wooden boats with patched sails are like charcoal sketches on the canvas. As we gently drop anchor the crew ask if we’d like to hear some music. The soft grey twilight is draping itself over the lake like a Pashmina shawl, and we imagine haunting Hindi folksongs floating out across the water as the light fades and we nod our heads. Minutes later Waltzing Matilda, sung in what the CD cover claims is an aboriginal dialect, blasts out at full volume; this is closely followed by La Cucaracha in Spanish and Swing Low Sweet Chariot in no known language, possibly Swahili. Not quite what we had in mind, but this is India where an undercurrent of eccentricity always simmers below the surface, so there has to be some mad moments. This is a very different India, however, from the country’s north. The South Western state of Kerala is a world away from colourful, frenetic Rajasthan. Mother India has a gentler face (and pace) here. Forget harsh desert and forts, here there is lush green tropical foliage that reminds me of the best of Sri Lanka. Nobody hurries, women in jewel bright silk drift past as if lifted by a light breeze, and you can walk the back streets of Kochi (formerly Cochin), our first stop in Kerala, with the minimum of fuss. Only the odd shopkeeper calls, “Madam over here, just look, just look” in a desultory fashion but few can be bothered to rise from their shop front seats in the shade to hammer home a sale. We check in to the Taj Malabar, situated right on the busy harbour. The courtyard overlooking the water is a great place to sit and watch harbour-life as painted boats laden with produce and fisherman in dugout canoes sail past. In the evening we take a sunset cruise around the coast. The sky is streaked a vibrant blue and sari gold and the famous fishing nets of Kochi, intricate arrangements of net and slender wood poles, look like preying mantas’ silhouetted against the sunset. There is a marsala of religions in Kochi, represented by Christian churches, mosques and Hindu temples, and in Jew Town a synagogue with powder blue walls and bohemian crystal lamps. This was once a Dutch trading port and the colonial architecture remains, especially within the walls of the old fort where the houses have gabled roofs and wooden shutters. Cochin is on its way to becoming the Noosa of southern India. In the old fort area there are new boutique hotels and the odd trendy café and shop. Mid morning, feet dusty from walking and vicariously exhausted from watching school girls in their perfect pressed, Persil-white school shirts and tunics run races in one of the church yards we take chai at Teapot (Petercelli St, Fort Cochin). It has a trendy décor and extensive tea menu that even the most cafésavvy Melburnian would enjoy. We also stop in at Cinnamon (Parade Ground Rd, Fort Cochin) to flick through racks of Indian designer clothes, lunch at Malabar House a few doors down, (www.malabarhouse.com) and have evening drinks at the Brunton Boatyard hotel on the water (Calvathy Rd). So by the end of the day we feel we have experienced ‘cool’ Cochin. Taj Malabar has arranged a liveried driver to take us from one hotel to another in air-conditioned splendour. Although the suspension (it has to be said), is less than splendid, but with our driver’s friendly tour-guiding and solicitous attention to needs we didn’t even know we had more than made up for it. Thus we arrive at Taj Garden Resort in Kumarakom in a state of memsahib-like calm and are ushered through tropic gardens direct to our rice boat where we watch our luggage being balanced over precarious planks to be loaded aboard, only realising when it is too late they we have to follow the same route. There are five staff lined up to greet us, including the captain, a cook and an engineer and to their credit none of them so much as crack a smile as we land somewhat inelegantly on the deck. Boats like this, with canopies woven from bamboo were once used to transport rice, fruit and copra along the vast 900km network of canals, lake and lagoons that lead to the Arabian Sea. These days there is a thriving tourist trade in houseboats built in traditional style, although the designs are ever more curly and elaborate. Our Taj boat has 3-bedrooms with ensuites downstairs and an upper sun deck where we spend most of the next two days watching the canal banks drift by, a moving magic lantern show of coconut palms, banana trees and wavy pepper vines. Here and there are pastel-hued huts with flapping washing, waterlogged fields and the odd bewildered sacred cow. When we stop for lunch the air is full of bright yellow butterflies and the scent of nutmeg and cinnamon. Our chef produces an impressive array of spicy south Indian dishes from the tiny kitchen; tiger prawns fresh from the fishermen, sauce tart with tamarind and strong, bitter coffee. As the day wears on the waterways become narrower, more like traditional canals and we can hear snatches of conversation from the bank. We watch children playing cricket with coconuts as balls with yard chickens as spectators, and women washing clothes at the waters edge. At Alappuzha (formerly Alleppey) we see them carving a long 100–man snake boat ready to compete in the Nehru Trophy Boat Race in August, an event so serious it demands an impressive stand for visiting dignitaries. We aren’t the only rice boat on the waterway, they litter the backwaters like floating peanut shells but the popularity doesn’t spoil the peace. It is hard to step ashore at the end of the trip. Only the promise of a stay at Taj Green Cove Resort, Kovalam where the Grand Jiva spa and Balinese-inspired rooms offer a little beachside bliss keeps us moving on. The final treat is a stay at Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, Mumbai. Not my treat sadly, I have a plane to catch but my travelling companion has booked herself into an impressive suite in the old part of the hotel. She rings me later from her cushioned couch, a maharani ensconced in the luxury of India’s finest grand dame hotel. Meanwhile I am stuck in the mad Mumbai traffic, which is at a honking, steaming, monsoon standstill – the calmness of Kerala is a distant dream. | |||||
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