Allepey

Monday evening last week we arrived in Allepey to board our houseboat home for the next two days.  It was absolute serenity on our houseboat.  We ate and slept on the boat as it lazed its way around the canals of the backwaters. This part of Kerala is often called the Venice of the East and with good reason.  There are over 700 canals in this part of Kerala bordered on each side by small, colorful houses, each with its own rice paddy growing behind it.  Almost every fruit you can imagine grows readily here.  There are palm trees, mangos, papaya, and jackfruit trees almost everywhere you look.  Life along the canals seems unchanged in the last hundred years and the farther you drift along,  the more you feel that you are drifting into another time….  Men in lunghi bathe, women wash laundry and clean dishes seemingly indifferent to your presence, curious children wave at you excitedly from the river-bank.   We buy fresh fish for our meals from fisherman who come gliding up to the boat in long, thin traditional canoes with coolers bursting with tiger prawns, freshwater lobsters, and black pompano.  I think the pictures speak for themselves :-)