Day 38, 39 - Backwaters - Wednesday 23rd, Thursday 24th November 2011

We were up bright and early to have breakfast before setting off to finishing point to secure our houseboat. Over breakie we met a really lovely couple who were at the end of their world tour with India as their last stop. We chatted about the various countries and recommendations and exchanged email addresses.

Loaded up with all our bags and rucksacks, we started the 20 minute walk to finishing point. Once there, the mammoth job of checking out the numerous houseboats and haggling process started. After telling everyone that our final price was 6,000 rs a night and being shown quite a few 7,000 plus boats, we finally found a houseboat we really liked with a price tag of 6,500 rs a night with air con! We were happy and so left our bags there and headed for a quick chai before our jet off time of 11am. After a 15 minute walk, we stumbled across a tea shop - hot and sweaty, we ventured in only to be confronted by about 20 Indian men whose late breakfast / early lunch we'd quite obviously interrupted. 2 cups of chai and lots of stares later, we finished up and walked back to our houseboat.

The houseboats are truly something to be marvelled at - it's amazing how big some of them are! Our rice boat was a lovely 1 bedroom one with a front deck with chairs and a dining area, plus a kitchen out the back and a sun deck up the top. We sailed off into the backwaters with a lovely soundtrack of the Aqua and the Venga Boys - Indian's choice in music is also something to marvel at!

Our first day consisted of lazing around, watching the villages of the backwaters, reading our books, eating lots of yummy home cooked Indian food and generally chilling out. After the first nights sunset, we settled down to watch Ra One (the latest Bollywood smash hit) on pirate with English subtitles - quite an interesting experience!

The next morning we were greeted by yet another scrummy Keralan breakfast followed by a spot of fishing. This basically entailed a bit of stick with a wire with dough wrapped around the end to attract the fish. Unsurprising, we only managed to catch a tiny weeny fish (like the goldfish at home) - the most hystiocal part of this was that as Adam went to unhook the fish it wriggled and he got scared and threw the whole rod into the river. Classic moment! Check out the photos for the size of Adam's whopper (his fish, of course).

In the evening, a little village man came with his canoe and we paddled around the smaller canals of the backwaters and saw the day to day of the villages as we canoed right past their houses. Once back, we settled down for some dinner and another film but not before being absolutely scared witless by a huge giant bat who decided to join us for dinner. We were terrified as it did a couple of laps of our cabin! (Adam said it was like a bat out of hell - loser!).

We retired to bed - completely chilled out and rested after a wonderful 2 days on the backwaters.