OK, so Alleppy....famous because it is on the edge of a vast network of inland canals and rivers (reputedly 900kms worth). Alleppy itself is about 250,000 people, very leafy with a lot of canals itself (kind of like Amsterdam, but kind of not if you know what I mean). Now in town here these canals are almost totally covered over in some lilly-padish kind of watergrowth (which they say was introduced from Africa). But the main canal, as you exit town and pass the aroma, enters into the rest of the network.
This is an almost fairy tale world where no roads are possible and everyone travels by boat (mostly human powered) or foot. People live all along the banks of the waterway with a ferry-based public transit system. Homes are on small plots of land and then in-behind them are vast rice paddies. (This area is the rice-bowl of this province of India). The rice fields are usually a foot or two lower than the water levels in the waterway with everything held back by small dikes. Then at the right time of the year, the dikes are opened in strategic places and the rice paddies flooded. Also, once per year in the rainy season, the water levels tend to rise just enough that for a week or so many homes are flooded with a few inches of water!). We decided to lay our heads in a small hut surrounded by well-tended gardens in the town itself.
The big business here is taking tourists out by locally constructed boats through the waterways. You can be paddled about in a canoe-like boat, or cruised about by motor in a slightly larger craft, or do an overnight catered trip in what they call 'houseboats'. We skipped the houseboat thing and did one afternoon by canoe and a second afternoon by motorboat. The houseboat thing was very expensive 140$ per night and up depending if you wanted a boat with AC, sat TV, etc!!!! Yeah, it would have been nice, but we wouldn't really have seen anything much more...it would have just been for the experience of sleeping out on the water for a night...something that isn't really much of a new experience for us and in fact, we thought...half the enjoyment of it for us is going for swims etc...and believe me...you don't want to swim in this water...which is the garbage dump for all of the people living around it!!
Here, you can see John pretending to enjoy his coconut drink..... some of the views from our canoe including one of three churches we noticed....
So maybe we were turned off the idea of an overnighter with swimming, however, the people who live here are constantly in the water...as we motored by, people are swimming, washing themselves, washing their clothes, washing their dishes, throwing their left--over organic scraps etc. And their homes are on small pieces of land, so although they must be using latrines....the distance between them and the water table/water's edge can't be much more than a few meters.
With the houseboats...we are told their numbers have gone from a few tens to well over 500 in the last 5-10 yrs. You can see all over the place new ones under construction (and you can see from the photo that these are not small craft!). The waters are full of them everywhere..and we are told that holding tanks for the toilets are rare. That's a lot of human waste flushing directly into the canals!
As for the life of the people here....it seems the pattern is the older parents/grandparents are mostly working the rice fields (tho they are using machines to cut the rice) and the younger parents, post-school age children are involved in the tourist business (working the tour boats, houseboats). The kids are playing on the banks, walking home from school along the banks and always calling out "Hello...what is your name...where you from?". It is hard to put into words how cute and beautiful they are. The older people, as you pass them by doing laundry or just sitting around...seem rather expressionless and almost sad...but the kids are always so happy-looking. It gives one reason for hope...
...like Heresh, our guide for the day we motored around....21 full of ambition to become a tour guide, learning to say a few phrases in dozens of languages, and talking geography of everyone's countries. He is so different already from his parent's generation. How will India change under this new generation? It makes us very curious to wonder what all of these places will be like even 20 yrs from now.
Well, as we wind up here in Alleppy it looks like the time has come to make the shift to North India, presumably a whole new and different world. We are looking at ways to make the 1500km journey north to Rajasthan now...stay tuned.
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