We had to have our things ready for 11.00am this morning when we would be taken by Anzi the guy from the home stay to the house boat. James went to the post office but unfortunately couldn't get the parcel posted because they were on strike! Oh well we would just post it at the next opportunity. At 11.00am we waited downstairs while Anzi sorted a tuk tuk to take us to the boat. He asked if we wanted beers on the boat, if so the tuk tuk driver would stop at the shop before going to the boat. We said yes so that was our first stop, again it was a bizarre shop with two groups of Indian guys queuing outside and for some reason James could go through a small side door to buy our beer. We set off for the house boat, Anzi met us there and led us to the waters edge where the boat was waiting. Infact there were hundreds of houseboats if varying sizes tied up to water front and then another row behind them tied to the boats in front and so on. Our boat was about half way down the strip and on the second row of boats. This meant getting onto a large houseboat with our bags, (luckily Anzi carried my big one) walking through the boat to the back and then making a jump for our boat! Once on we relaxed, the boat was maybe twice the size of the last houseboat we went on. It had chairs at the front just the same but a four seater dining table behind and a sideboard which held a television. The bedroom was probably bigger than a few of the bedrooms we've had in hotels. We dumped our stuff in the bedroom and sat at the front waiting to go. There were two staff on the boat bringing supplies on and getting ready. This time the houseboat was engine powered and had a wheel to steer at the front. When we were ready to go we were brought a fresh lime soda each and one of the guys took the seat at the wheel while the other untied us from another boat pushed us off and jumped on board. It took some manouvering out of its parking space then we got going in a giant convoy of hundreds of boats doing the same thing. It was a bizarre sight as the boats lined up to get out of where they all park. After 20minutes or so it had spread out a lot and then we had taken a turn off from the others and then we were slowly moving around the backwaters. Occasionally there was a houseboat which would come past us going a little faster and some tourist boats full of people but other than that it was peaceful. The backwaters are enormous, there are over 1000km of waterways so there are lots and lots of different routes for each tour to take. Again this was one of the most relaxing times we'd had, we pulled over around 1pm for lunch which was fish, rice and vegetables. Then set off again, they told us that we would be staying near a village tonight and when we got there we could have a walk around. We sat and watched the world go by, we went past a lot of rice paddies with people working in them we also passed some sections cut off where there was a prawn farm. The water ways were enormous and so open compared to the narrow canals we had gone through last time. We reached the village at around 5.30pm the guys tied the boat to some trees and hooked up some cables to an electrics box for our air con! Then we got off to have a walk around, we got plenty of stares, we thought this had to be the most remote place we had been so far in India. They had a car ferry which crossed the 20 metre wide canal with space for three or four cars. Once it got to the other side there were two guys who manually put down small metal ramps behind the car tyres, the car would reverse off then the ramps moved behind the next car and so on. The village was only really small so we walked all the way round, got some bits we needed from a little shop then went back to chill on the boat. We read our books and drank a couple of beers until tea time when we had chicken curry, rice, vegetables and chapatis. After tea we went back to our books until going to bed. The only bad thing about where we were staying was that every so often a passenger ferry would come up the canal quite fast and make the water ripple which then made the boat rock. Luckily by the time we went to bed it had stopped.