Hannah and I are now in Alleppey in Kerala, the most southern state in South India. Some have tried to descrbe it as an 'Indian Venice' so Hannah and I have arrived with plan to sail the backaters in a canal boat for a couple of days over 20-25 km. Plan is to stay here for 4-5 days and then make our way back up to Cochin for the flight to Mumbai. We have only just arrived from Cochin by train and this will probablybe our last stop but making our way back to Mumbai.
It has been a busy week for travelling but a slow one in all other respects as Hannah as been recovering from her first bout of the delhi belly that knocked her over for 3 days, which we believe was caused by a fish curry in Mysore.
Despite an impressive walk around the Maharaja's palace the rest of Mysore was a disappointment, but then I guess that a place will always be doomed when your travel partner is feeling sick. Hey, she survived and we took a 3 hour bus down to Kalpetta, which I guess can be seen as the Indian version of our lake district.
Originally we were aiming to go to sultanbatheri, a sort of outdoors activities headquarters but when we arrived it was so dead that we though sod this and just leaped onto the next bus that was passing (such freedom) on its way to Kalpetta 15 km furtehr west back to the coast. We stayed there for 2 days and relaxed as Hannah recovered and then took a further bus down to Cochin in Kerala, where we stayed for another 2 days.
Cochin is a port. We watched as all in the same area, the locals were using chinese fishing nets (probably about 20) to catch the sea and river water fish and then quickly take their freshly caught fish to the market, literally 50 yards away where loads of people were bidding for the seafood. Vast majority of the bidders turned out to be agents for the seaside restaurants located only another 50 yards buying whatever has just been ordered by the tourists waiting for their food! So we had some. Hannah and I had a go at using the chinese fishing nets with the locals - good fun!
