The Keralan Shuffle

I met my friend at Mumbai airport and a day later we got on a flight south to Kochi in Kerala. I've been very excited about heading to the south of India as I've been told by many people how beautiful the scenery is and how relaxed the people are. We got off the plane and were met by glorious blue skies and lovely warm weather. Our taxi to our hotel had us driving past lush green fields, miles of rivers and palm tree jungles - I've never seen so many palm trees in my life! When we got to our hotel they upgraded us to a suite for no extra charge!

Fort Kochi in Kerala is famous for its Chinese fishing nets which is an ancient form of fishing that is slowly disappearing.

A fisherman insisted on taking our photo (for a tip of course!!).

The Indian state of Kerala has many traditional art forms and we went to see a performance that showcased a variety of these; I can honestly say I don't think I've ever watched something so weird and pointless! They gave us a 90 minute tutorial on things such as dramatic eye and eyebrow movement common in traditional Keralan theatre which basically involved a man in drag rolling his eyes and raising his eyebrows again and again and again....!

Eye rolling whilst watching eye rolling.

Kerala's main draw is the miles of backwaters nestled amongst palm tree jungles set back from the coast. We booked our own house boat for 24 hours and had our own crew - a driver and a cook  -to attend to our every need! On our way there the taxi driver wasn't paying attention and we screeched to halt and skidded across the road; to be honest I'm surprised this is my first experience of a road accident here because the driving is crazy! We got on the steel framed boat covered in thatch that looked like a giant wicker basket and were shown to our room which was in the middle of the boat, the front consisted of a dining area and a seating area for us and the crew's quarters and kitchen were in a small space at the back. We put on some music, opened some beers and cruised down the rivers for hours in the sun.

All the boats looked like baskets!

Some of the backwaters were fringed with small villages.

They cooked us what I can only describe as an Indian feast; I had fish that had been caught in the backwaters that morning by the cook and it was delicious. All day I had been temped to jump in to the water so as the sun was setting the driver took us to a suitable spot and we catapulted ourselves in and tried not to think about all the fish, crocs and other weird things that could be lurking in the water.

Jumping in!

All sorts of slimy reeds were getting tangled round my legs and neck and we swam against the strong current for while before scrambling back on to the boat.

As the sun set we were served another feast and we spent the evening playing cards and drinking beer with the cook whilst watching fire flies in the distance and trying not to get bitten too much by all the insects that were invading the boat. The cook taught us the 'Keralan shuffle' when it was his turn to shuffle the cards - basically this involved clumsily slapping the cards a few times and dropping half of them on the floor.

The view when we woke up.

The next morning we had breakfast and cruised back to the dock where a driver was waiting for us to take us to our next destination - five star Ramada Resort, Cochin. We had seen this hotel online whilst looking for places to stay and we decided to treat ourselves for one night - we'd found a travel agency that gave us a good price.

We definitely got our money's worth as we used all the facilities from 11am on the first day to 6pm on the second: pool, sun deck, table tennis and gym to name a few. 

120m 'meandering' pool on an island surrounded by backwater rivers.

We'd booked a 14 hour overnight train to Goa on Friday night and I was so sun-burnt and in pain from two gym sessions that it was a very uncomfortable journey!