Boats, Trains, Planes and Automobiles

Hi Dad:

We thought about you a lot when we were poking through the rivers and lakes in the Kerala lowlands. This is a bit of a virtual canoe trip in the backwaters of Kerala for you. You can single click on the pictures to see larger copies. As well if you click on the part that says 1 comment, you can add a comment.
Lets start out at your place on the 5th of January. The road was slick getting there because of ice and snow conditions. Highway 8 was closed to Sportsworld Drive so we were quite late getting there. We dropped Christine and our cars, and Mum drove us to the airport. We were just a shade better than on time for our flight to Detroit. In motor city they had some car "museums"/gift shops that we looked in. They had a few models of old cars and the GM one had a corvette.

We arrived in Amsterdam at 6:00 in the morning of the 6th. We had to wait till 7:00 am for the place to open before we could pick up our Amsterdam passes. We took the train to Amsterdam central station and walked over the canal to the hotel Multatuli, a canal house with no gable or lifting hook. They weren't ready for us, as it was only 8:00 am so we had breakfast there and watched the sun come up. The picture of Dianne and Ben is on the hotel side of the canal looking back at the railway station. The clocks on the railway station impressed Joel. We took an excellent canal tour after breakfast, the next picture is in the tour boat. There were a lot of live aboard boats in the canal. The following picture is of some sailboats that looked like they had people living on them. The sailboats of this particular style are double ended like a lifeboat or canoe, and have large lee-boards on each side. Amsterdam had excellent bicycle roads everywhere, separate from the sidewalks and from the street. You could kind of imagine yourself living in one of these large sailboats, with your bicycles flying off to bang some code at the office. The canal houses were very neat as well. They had all different kinds of gables, and most of them had lifting hooks in the peak of the gable. Even the hotel stairs were too narrow and twisty to get a couch up them. The canal tour and Amsterdam brought back a memory of a view-master full of travel slides that used to be at Grandma Hildred's. I felt like I should pinch myself that I was actually in Europe with part of my own family. After the canal tour and lunch we got our room, and had a nap on the four single beds. The hotel was chosen because it had a quad room! We then went to the museum of modern art because it was in walking distance from the hotel, and because it was still open after we woke up from our nap at 4:30. It had lots of film as well as photographs, sculptures.... There was a cobblestone footpath along the canal back to the hotel with a "floating" Chinese restaurant where we had supper.
We arrived in Kochin on the 8th at 5:00 in the morning. Bovis had wisely suggested that we get a 6 hour airport hotel room so that we could sleep a little before having lunch with him and his friend the retired vice-president of the Kochin University. After lunch we went to the downtown hotel from the same Abad chain and slept till the next morning. On Sunday Xavier, a driver from the Kochin university took us on a tour of Cochin. We went to an English Mass and Xavier introduced us to his priest. We also saw people fishing with Chinese nets in the Arabian sea at Fort Kochin. We went to a synagogue, and a couple of palaces of the king of Kochin. Jewish people landed in Kochin after the dispersion from the Roman's destruction of the temple in 95 CE. This synagogue was constructed in the 15th century by Jewish refugees who sought the protection of the King of Kochin.

Finally on the 10th we arrived at Alleppey, and at the canoeing part of our story. This was a canoe with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living area, a kitchen and 3 staff. It was the waterway that made us think of you and all of the small canoes and nice stopping spots along the way. Bovis met us there and went on the boat until after lunch. The waterway was lined with trees, a bit like Big Creek. Like Big Creek the trees were in a belt beside the water and there were farmer’s fields leading up to them. The trees were mostly coconut palms, although Bovis kept pointing out Mangoes which look to me like coconut palms with some yellow leaves. The trees grow on a dyke which separates the salt backwater from the fresh water, needed to flood the rice patty. The farmer’s live in very cute little bungalows with red tile roofs like the church pictured. They are about 250 square feet, beautifully proportioned with nice verandahs on them. Joel and I went for a walk along the path on top of the dyke. There was a lady reading to her child on one of the verandahs. The people don’t drive motor vehicles along the dykes. They walk in the immediate area or take boats for longer travel. They paddle these, canoe like, boats with what seem like regular canoe paddles. The top is cylindrical like the throat of the paddle, and there is no handle. They switch sides rather than J-stroke. I was showing some guy the J-stroke. His passengers thought it was cool, but I am not sure if he did or not. No one on board spoke any English. There was a paddling club that had its headquarters on an island off the end of the dyke that we tied up to at 5:00 pm, when the fishermen take over the backwaters from the tourists. There are some big lakes that are part of the backwaters and just before 5:00 the pilot of our boat let me drive across one of them, I drove across with the wind in my face thinking, like Lawrie Carter, that everything is right in the world. They fish on the big lakes. There are resorts among the backwaters too. I took a picture of one. The paddling club made me think that it would be fun for adventure tourists to paddle from resort to resort on their own steam. They had racing kayaks, but a sea kayak or canoe, would be just as good, and have room enough for clothes. It was so relaxing with lots of time to read and daydream. We read Vinyl Café, The Hobbit, The Jungle book, and a couple of other books among the 4 of us. In the morning we saw kids walking to school along the top of the dykes. Presumably it is the same with people walking to the pictured church on Sunday morning. We also saw the boatyard in the morning. It was neat too with he canoe part of the boat being made of large planks, separately from the bamboo superstructure.

Later Tuesday we were driven to Kovalam. Kovalam is a beach town. The pictures are the view from the hotel. The one is inland, the other out towards the Arabian sea. The lighthouse marks Lighthouse Beach, a beach with a huge market on its inland edge. The market is in a palm grove that is quite low. There are canals draining it and somewhat narrow raised paths that connect higher areas with houses or shops on them. Back from the beach in one of these raised areas was the Lonely Planet restaurant. This was another great tip from Bovis, a vegetarian restaurant where I had excellent green peppers stuffed with sweet potato. Wednesday we swam in the ocean, and the kids looked through the shops. Wednesday night we had supper at a pizzeria on the beach. It was quite peaceful looking at the lights and the Arabian sea. Thursday morning we went snorkeling. The guide spoke excellent English. He took us out in a traditional catamaran. This was 3 solid pieces of wood, tied together at the ends. The wood itself supplies the buoyancy and water flows freely into and out of the boat. It was big enough to hold 6 of us. Two of us at a time helped the guides paddle with vertical slices of bamboo. The bamboo pieces were held with the hands open, concave side to the rear. They were used on both sides of the boat like kayak paddles. The catamarans were pushed out past where the waves were breaking with the passengers in them and then paddled to the area where we snorkelled. The area for snorkelling was a man made peninsula, used to generate electrical power from the action of the waves. We snorkelled in the lee of that. There was pink coral growing on the cement and lots and lots of fish. If you looked just at the surface of the water you could see little swordfish like fish, just out of reach of your hands. There were black and white anemones on the rocks with the coral. There were mostly striped fish, sort of like Nemo. There were a few bright blue fish like Dory as well. There were also some bigger fish that I think were groupers. There was enough current that you didn’t stay still if you stopped using your arms or your fins. The boat rode in the water rather than on it so was easy to climb in and out of.

This brings us to the second train part of our journey. We took an Indian train from Trivanderum back to Cochin. We rode in three tier AC. We found out that what this means is that, during the daytime, three people share a bench. At night, one person sleeps on the bench. The back of the bench folds up for the second person to sleep on and there is a permanent berth on top for the third person. Ben and Joel spent part of the 5 hour trip on the upstairs berth. The rest we all spent reading. I read some of a book by Ken Dryden, formerly the leaf’s goalie, that Dianne found at a used bookstore back in Waterloo. We got ready for our stop too early, so we stood for 10 minutes on the platform between cars. It was kind of neat to ride along with the tropical air blowing on you, looking in peoples backyards and at the lights. A semi retired math professor headed for Madras and a young mechanical engineer headed for Calcutta, oriented us to the train and helped us get off at the right stop at 8:30 pm.

Today Dianne told Tim that she got her cold from too much fun. We had a very fun vacation. It was great to be shown around by Bovis and his friends and colleagues. Dianne and I had Bhatura, puffed fried bread that we like for lunch with chickpeas. We got groceries today, and I found myself feeling quite comfortable. My mood was a bit dampened when the fruit and vegetable dude almost convinced us to buy $18.00 cherries. The cashier saved us though. We were back at church on Sunday. We have been for a few walks. Ben and Joel are back at school today. I am at work tomorrow. I hope to go to the city club and use the rowing machine for a while tonight. We have seen a truly beautiful part of India.
Love Rich