House Boats

Kerala! All the way south, such a long week I was so ready to relax. And relax we did. Arrived Friday evening, checked into our guest house after a 2 hour cab ride from Cochin to Allepy. Good thing Brian, Jason, My and I took the little car, apparently the 7 person jeep was not so much a 7 seater..I shockingly fell asleep for most of the ride.

Our guest house was nice-rooms set around a pretty garden courtyard. The rooms were pretty bare, but they had mosquito nets and fans, that was most important. After seeing the two pretty small downstairs rooms we'd booked, we were taken upstairs. As the guy was walking up the stairs he says 'you can play football in this room' i am like, ha, yeah right. But actually, it was true. We got the suite. Nice. too bad there weren't enough beds and we had to make them bring up some mattresses and jerry-rig the mosquito nets!

After watching those shenanigans, we need a beer and a good meal. We piled 5 into a rickshaw and met up with the others at the Royal Park Hotel bar. Apparently restaurants in Allepy don't serve alcohol; good thing the bars serve food, and a/c.

Long meal, lots of drinks and 200 rupees later (I am serious) we headed back to our guest house to rest up for our strenuous 22 hours on a boat.

Priz and Alon were the designated boat pickers and bargainers, and I decided to tag along. We woke up early, waited 45 min
for our omeletts at the 'restaurant' at our guest house (I put restaurant in quotes bc it consisted of a tiny stove and two pots cooking food and brining it to picnic tables in the garden), and hopped in a rickshaw to the place where all the boats were docked.

I think we climbed onto at least 8 boats, and climbing onto those boats was not easy. The planks leading from the dock to the boat was as wide as a shoebox, if not less so, and it was teathered to the boat quite precariously...i almost fell in, and one guy we saw did!

Finally we settled on a boat, hot and bedraggled we sat for 20 min arguing about the price of the boat, the price of the beers, and finaly, why they are charging us a 'lucury tax when they never mentioned that in the past. When the rest of our friends arrived the men we'd been making deals with met them at their rickshaw and were very quick to mention what great bargainers we were. SCORE.

There we are on our boat, just after bargaining madness.

The boat was baller, as Jason would say. Three bedrooms, a downstairs with lots of chairs and a table for meals, and then an upper level deck with shade and a mattress in the sun. We spent much of our time lounging around on the upper deck, sipping beer and watching the trees go by. Not gonna lie, it was nice.


We also hopped off the boat after lunch and wondered around a little village. Apparently it was laundry time.


Sunday after disembarking we went to the beach and wandered around Allepy. Fun times. I will let the pictures do the talking...