22nd February 2012

Lazy morning packing a separate overnight bags to take on the boat, as we are leaving all our heavy bags with Kartic our driver who will meet us at Allepey after our overnight houseboat journey. From the jetty at our hotel we boarded our houseboat "St Dominic" and set off through the Kerela backwaters.


This was a private boat for just the three of us and it made you feel almost like a royal celebrity. In fact you weren't because there were lots of "royal celebrities" all passing up and down the backwaters.


Still the peaceful movement of the boat and the countryside did have the effect of relaxing you.


We saw lots of birds that looked like cormorants swimming underwater then surfacing with a fish in their mouth before flying away.

Three young men were the crew of the boat and cooked our meals, went and got beer from local shops and steered us gently through all the different canals and waterways. At one time we stopped at a local village to allow us to stretch our legs. As we walked along the canal bank we came across a doctor'shouse. Savi went in and after we managed to get his attention away from the television he was watching she asked him about her ongoing illness. He listened, asked questions as best he could given the language problems and came to a diagnosis that non of us could understand. He gave us 10 green tablets and 10 brown tablets saying take one of both colours three times a day!!! After our evening meal we retired to our air conditioned rooms to bed. Savi had another bad night controlling her temperature and when we got up in the middle of the night and decided to switch off the air conditioning we realised that it could not be turned off with any of the switches in the room. Eventually we woke one of the crew who came with a remote control to switch off the a/c. Despite Savi's ongoing illness this was still a truly magical experience. In the morning we had breakfast then made the final 2-3km journey into Allepey. When we docked we tied up against five other boats and had to disembark from one boat to another with some of the stretches across open water between the boats quite testing.





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Location:Allepey