Of Houseboats, Homestays, and Tigerless Safaris: Kerala

After the hell of Elephant Valley, I was thrilled for a night in a regular hotel/inn/B&B, where you get to your room by climbing a set of stairs and get to breakfast by climbing back down. Bliss. Unfortunately, on arriving at said B&B (in Kerala), I learned that the advertised nature walk was more of a nature mountain trek (and, as I mentioned back in Ethiopia, I can't do high altitude trekking). Combined with the knowledge that people normally didn't see tigers (if there was a good chance of seeing tigers, they wouldn't allow tourists to walk around in the forest), I decided to sit out the trek. Very fortunate, because not only were there no tigers, but there were torrential rains AND leeches (4 out of 8 people found at least one leech busily sucking their blood).

The next day, it was off to the houseboat (actually two), to see a little bit of Kerala by water. What can I say? The staff was nice enough, the food wasn't bad, the rooms (especially the bathrooms) were a little scary but basically fine, and all we really did was play cards, read, and try desperately not to get bitten by the millions of mosquitoes hanging out with us. The most exciting thing that happened in the 24 or so hours on board was having a cat run onto the boat, freak out, jump into the water to avoid all of us, manage to scale back up the boat and run off. Like I said, not too exciting.

From the houseboat, we moved on to a homestay, the idea of which I found terrifying (and with good reason). While the house itself was large and (kind of) modern, something crucial was missing from my room: a bathroom. Yes, gentle reader, I was forced to share a not particularly clean, non-air conditioned, spider-infested hall bathroom with my (much loathed) male tour leader and the male single traveler. Not at all good.

Also pretty rough: watching TV. We assumed (reasonably, I think) that the television in the living room was for the use of guests (since the only other entertainment provided was waiting for the air conditioning to come on in the bedrooms). Apparently not. For nearly an hour, as several of us sat in the living room watching Juno, the daughter of the house and her cousin (both under 6) sobbed loudly from a bedroom next to the living room. As I pieced together later that evening, they'd come home in the hopes of seeing some children's show, and had those hopes dashed by Juno. (Life can be cruel, though, so I suppose that it's better that they learn sooner rather than later.) Last difficult thing about the homestay: the home-cooking, which seemed to necessitate getting at least one long, straight, black hair into every dish. Yum!

The accommodations aside, the village was interesting enough. Our host (and local guide) spoke lovely English, so for the first time in more than a week, we could actually understand the explanations being provided. His one misstep: taking us to a local bar to sample the local brew, a disgusting smelling (and not much better tasting) concoction made of fermented coconut water. Even that visit had a bright spot, though: we got to witness a (fairly polite) bar brawl between two inebriated patrons.

All in all, the time spent in Kerala didn't give me that great a picture of what life is like in the area, although I did come away with the sense that people were a lot better educated, better dressed, better fed, and better off than in many other parts of India. Now, had there only been something to see, that would have been something.