Our alarms were set for seven a.m. to get our seven thirty breakfast to get out for eight o' clock. Somehow or other, we slept through them and only woke up when Saj's nephew knocked our door at quarter to eight. Not a good start!

One of the best things about travelling is meeting other travellers and sharing experiences. Squashed into the back seats of the minibus, we talked to two young travellers, one who worked as a sports journalist and the other for Offcom. They had recently experienced their friends' Indian wedding in Chennai where the marrying British / Indian couple hardly understood anything of the proceedings but had decided to please their families by getting married in India.

The trip today cost us 500 rupees each which included transport on road and water and food. Not bad value for a touch over £7 each!

Noticed that sitting at the back of the minibus makes you less aware of the risks that a driver is taking. I felt that the journey to the drop off point was quite relaxed only to be told my wife who had to take the last available seat immediately behind the driver that she couldn't relax at all because she was so close to the action and had had to witness all his mad attempts at overtaking.

Dropped off at the side of the road, the troop of uncertain travellers laboured through a field and unclear path until we arrived at a covered boat which had a row of two wicker chairs on one side and a single row on the other. Don't ask which was portside because I have no clue! For some reason, every one headed for the two wicker row to start which meant that we seemed to be in danger of toppling over with the weight all distributed on one side. Fortunately, some big boned individuals arrived and seemed to counterbalance the rest of us sufficiently.

A lean and scrawny Indian man of some age stood at the front of the boat and somewhere secreted behind the toilet area a shorter but tubbier man stood at the stern with elongated poles which they fed into the water and started to draw the twenty four passengers across to the other side of what looked like a river and then into and up narrow creeky waterways where the vegetation on either side closed in upon us so that every now and then a branch of an unidentified tree would threaten to whack us in our collective faces.

This was supposed to be a remote and idyllic location! So I and most of the other travellers were more than slightly perturbed that a young Indian man accompanied by his family seemed more intent on shouting down his mobile phone for most of the creek and was unaware of the passing ponds of lotus like flowers or the kingfishers and mayflies busying beyond our reach. I did hope that a break back branch might whack him and his phone into the waters. But it never happened and he ignored all our dark, savage looks.

After this creeky interlude, we were back into wider waters where we passed small homes banking on to the waterfront and got our first sight of everyday life - a man milking a tiny herd of cows, waving women in front of tiny shacks, construction workers piling into mounds of sand, families filling up precariously narrow boats which headed past us to a nearby village. And everyone friendly and welcoming.

When we reaches the location for our dinner, the guide asked for twelve people to volunteer for the first shift to go on a narrow boat. I decided that we three would be in the first boat trip for a very good reason. We were lead down another narrow creek by the aforementioned lean and scrawny man with a huge pole thrust expertly into the waters as we wobbled pleasantly along in spite of the shouty phone man being on the boat. Onwards and about and through green and pleasant lands and back on to the main waterway and finally around a smallish island. A ride which in Disneyland we would unfortunately have had hideous animatronic creatures singing in squeaky, squawky voices about our wonderful utopian world.

Back on land, we watched the second and last troop of adventurers gently ease themselves into the cramped spaces on the boat and the shorter stubbier man take over the pole. Smugly, I congratulated myself silently on my decision to get on the first voyage as we watched the heavens open as the boat slowly drift away into the main waterway. The occupants of the boat were by and large naive travellers who had no coats and no umbrellas and were soon as wet as it is possible to be. Imagine a super delux power shower pounding down on your head and you might have a little idea of the surge of water upon them. Soaked to the skin. Pistyllio is the word in Welsh! After all this is monsoon season and we were witnessing the monsoon attacking our fellow day trippers.

Not that all the land-bound ones were safe from the weather. We all sheltered in a small corner of the thatched windowless shed where dinner was to be served. A pair of local curs came and sought shelter nearby under the eaves of sheds and another black dog found space next to the putrid toilet. We sympathised with their plight. However, I don't think that the RSPCA has such a strong foothold in Kerala as back in Wales as we were horrified to see our scrawny boatman leap into action and with a huge pole beat the black toilet dog into yelping submission for daring to shelter near us. It limped away only for him to chase it,catch up with it, corner it and then continue to thrash it sadistically in the long reeds as it squealed in pain with each heavy blow.
Two Dutch women sheltering with us were distraught and left helpless as they watched him chase and beat the other two dogs until they managed to beat a retreat further inland. Scrawny man seemed satisfied with his victory. But all witnesses to these events decided that no tip would be forthcoming for him!

With the returning of the wet ones from their sodden sojourn on the narrow boat, it was time for dinner. We sat facing inwards in two rows in the open hut -monsoon temporarily abated!- and watched the boat men plonk a variety of curry mixtures, pickles and rice onto banana leaf plates together with crispy popadom handfuls followed by a tasty tapioca pudding which tasted like rice pudding but with cardamon and other unfamiliar bits in. As long as you forgot about basic hygiene niceties and the thought that the scrawny boatman who was handing you the popadom had recently visited the land of unpleasantness of urine and worse where no visible sign of soap was to be witnessed, the dinner was rather tasty. Best food so far!

Anyway, soon on we proceeded in the big covered boat on the wider waterway with a few interesting stops on the way. One was to visit a clam factory beside the water and to see how and where the local clams were roasted. Another was to a local family's garden where we shown how they would earn a few extra rupees by making rope out of softened coconuts. We bought bags of banana and tapioca crisps for a few rupees and had time to wander around their garden, smile at but not touch their goat, peer into their well and notice the bunches of pepper hanging across one of their trees.

So that was it for this trip. Well worth the money to say the least. Not all pleasurable experiences but intriguing.

Arriving back in Fort Kochi, after a short rest we decided to walk down a new route to the cafe we visited yesterday. Caitlin, my daughter, is not totally or slightly comfortable with spicey food so with her needs in mind, we ate a little at the Sol Cafe. She had the familiar pasta and felt safe with the food.

Dark by the time we'd finished food, we decided to walk back down a new route and got caught by a monsoon attack. We had good coats but in spite of them, we were soaked and my walking sandals were drenched by the time we arrived back in our comfy, quirky room at Sajhome.

Tomorrow we are heading up to Munnar. Planned this route and accommodation some months back before I read the official tourist information for Munnar saying that going to Munnar in the monsoon season was not a good idea. What have we let ourselves in for?