Backwater's Homestay

We rose the next morning early to have breakfast and to meet to get a local bus down to where we boarded a boat to take us out into the Backwaters of Kelrla. The bus took about 2 hours to get don to the drop off point and being a local bus it was crammed in and I ended up stat on the back row squashed between about 8 other Indian guys.
After offloading the bags we walked a short way up to board the launch that would take us to our home stay. The launch was about 50 feet long and could probably accommodate about 50 people although we were lucky that we had it to ourselves. The boat wended its way through the myriad of canals and waterways that crisscross this huge area of man made lakes and islands. The pace of life here is defiantly much slower than anywhere else we had been. I can only describe the area as probably being similar to that of the Norfolk broads with large man made islands created to farm and live on however the area has a much greater population the The Broads. Also plying the waterways are water taxis and water buses, small delivery boats, dugout canoes and huge houseboats built completely from wood some of which are huge with double decks complete with huge air-conditioned rooms and viewing balconies. After and hour or so we reached 'Mr Thomas' House' where we were to stay the night. Mr Thomas actually has three buildings on his land; His own house, The home stay lodging which we shared with his brother-in-law Philip and an other house he his having built to the rear of the property. The house we were to stay in was a very modern 2 story 'cottage' strangely English in its design but with a stone floor on the ground level and coir matting flooring through-out the upper floor, slightly uncomfortable on the feet as you have to remove your shoes in the house.
After a home cooked lunch we spent the afternoon chilling on the veranda, and in the early evening we were taken for a walk of the 'island' by Mr Tomas' son who was extremely knowledgeable on the history of all aspects of the area, both the people, lifestyle and agriculture of the region. The walk took us down the banks of the island (which has a perimeter path of over 20km) then into the centre where the paddy fields are located. These can be flooded and drained by a massive network of dykes and land drains and enable the fields to be rice cropped twice a year. The rice grown here is a local variety of locally grown rice and is only distributed to the Kerla region and not exported beyond. All the Backwaters are actually below sea level and the regulation of water into and out of the area is controlled by sluice gates and dykes. This does mean that in the monsoon seasons there can be widespread flooding of the islands however the people have learned to live with this an berms and dykes are improved and repaired each year to try to avert this issue. On reaching the far side of the island we climbed into a large open boat and were punted back round to the home stay whilst the boat guys sung traditional songs that had been sung by the people who used to work the fields in years gone by. Mr Matthew explained that many of these songs had been virtually lost and he had made it his mission to document many of these to preserve them for future generations. The cadence of many of these songs was similar to those of the Afro-Caribbean cotton workers songs sung as a call and respond style abate in the Malayalam language. By the time we got back to the house it had already gone dark and as our boat had no lights we had to skirt the edge of the canal to avoid the water taxis which kept hurtling by on the open canals using just a small torch light waved at the rear of the canoe to alert them to our presence! After tea we again sat around the veranda chatting and trying to get a copy of a film to work on the large screen TV that was in the lounge. Unfortunately the film was on my laptop but in a format the TV could not read so we tried in vain to convert the file format to a format that the owners laptop could read which in turn could be connected to the TV but to no avail and we gave up to just chat after about 3 hours of trying!