Kumarakom 17 | bellsandtrance's Blog

Oh getting up is so hard to do. It's been a fabulous stay at our beautiful spice garden and we would love more time, but alas we have more to see and more to do. We leave at 10 for a five hour drive to our next destination. The landscape is slowly changing now and we are leaving the mountains and entering the " real backwaters" of Kerala.
We stop of at a jetty and board a boat to our hotel. Not a bad way to spend New Year's Day.

Coconut lagoon as the name implies is a beautiful hotel right next to a lagoon. The entire place is filled with water canals and quaint bridges you have to cross to get to your rooms. It is extremely humid and hot and we are in heaven when we enter our totally luxurious Bungalows. Carved wooden ceilings and an outdoor shower. A really strong air conditioner yay!

This is such a tranquil place, tropical and hot hot hot! We went for a swim at sunset in the huge lukewarm swimming pool and watched the sunset over the lagoon. It's the place to go if you are in need of some serious R&R. There is a butterfly garden where the worlds largest and smallest butterflies can be found. In the evening there are thousands of Mosquitos who are ready to munch on every part of the body...luckily we are rigged for this and it's not too much of a problem.
Stella catches a frog and as it leaps out of her hand it instantly gets gobbled up my a by mean looking bullfrog. We sleep the most beautiful sleep and I feel far far away from home ( as I am of course) . Unfortunately we have to leave again the next day and it's with heavy hearts as we all like this place, especially the kids.
We leave for our journey further south, we pass through tropical jungles with many villages/towns in between- they never seem to stop. There are quite a few christian (catholic ) churches. This is due to the Portuguese influence, as they landed here in and stayed for so many years.

The South is different to the North of India, firstly there is the landscape, much greener and tropical. There is a different language called Malayalam which is a very difficult (even for some of the locals) as it sounds something like a turkey garbling. The people have a darker skin tone and the men mostly wear sarongs which they promptly tuck in when they are working ....this looks a bit like an oversized nappy and the children find the men walking around in skirts hilarious. Declan keeps trying to peep underneath the "skirts" and this is met with much laughter and play fighting. There are no beggars or we haven't met them yet. People seem to live an easier life here and the whole vibe is laid back, but hard working at the same time. The food is also more varied with many spicy vegetable dishes, salads and curries of course (still no holy cow) there is however buffalo ..tastes just like beef. There are also more tourists here and no one really takes photos of the kids.

We board a traditional rice boat converted into a luxurious houseboat. We have comfortable rooms with a wonderful view of the river, paddy fields on to our left and right. Wow this is something else! The river is very wide and there are many of these houseboats cruising along. It's great as you get a good view of life on the shore. We dock for the night at a little village and take a walk on the long and very narrow stretch of land. The locals are very friendly and they seem content with their lives. We sleep hardly feeling any sort of movement from the water, theses boats are very steady, I don't really sleep as the aircon freezes the room to sub zero temperatures and when it's off I feel like I am dying of heat....typical India, land of extremes.

The next day we have a short boat ride I between thousands of ducks before we embark on our next adventure on land. It was great on the houseboat I could've stayed one more night....but once again...alas.

Love to all
Us