21st February 2012

An early morning boat ride on a large double decker open topped boat with a lot of foreigners ( we have encountered mostly French people with a few British on this part of the tour) and quite a few NRI down the Periyar river. However the ones Savi wanted to join were the ones from, all places, Navsari ( where we are staying in the Gujarat) as they seemed to be having the most fun! The guy she had a seat next to was from near Kew Gardens, and was interesting for about 10 minutes! Learn body language Dude - see the crossed arms and slight turning away towards Elia (who also didn't maintain interest for very long either) !


- The views made up for it: mountain tops capped with verdant trees, and green foliage lining the banks. The boat traversed around weird looking but interesting trees that were there before the river was damned, and continue to stand like giant sentinels, with cormorants perched like sentries.


The only other wildlife that deigned to make an appearance was an elephant who seemed to be rooted for something on the banks of the river, who was still there when we returned, an hour later, diligently digging away.

We left our hotel to travel along winding roads with barely room for two vehicles to pass in some places, which meant that horns blared more than ever in a system that non of us have not worked out yet.





The tree plantations reminded Geoff and I of the ones recently visited by us in Ella, in Sri Lanka


An invitation at a Spice Plantation to have an elephant ride had no takers from our party, but there were lovely fresh spices in the shop. Next it was on to our hotel (The Lakesong) on the edges of the Kerala backwaters. Here we found that our overnight boat trip that we thought was planned for the next day had not been booked. It seemed that there had been a breakdown in communications somewhere and two nights had been booked at the hotel on the coast before we go to Cochin. We made hurried phone calls to our travel agent Sandeep and when he realised what had happened he managed to change the bookings and re-insert the houseboat trip. Savi still not well and suffering aches and pains in joints as well as overall weakness, not eating, and finding it hard to control her temperature at night time. She has obviously picked up a foreign bug and it is taking longer than expected to shake off. Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Kumarakom