My gorgeous weekend on the backwaters..

After 5 weeks in Kochi I finally managed to visit the backwaters, they´re sooooo beautiful, it was a great excursion.
I went with the other 4 volunteers working in the Kerala GVI project at the present time, Chesa, Georgi, Kirsty & Amy. Chesa and I worked at the school that morning and we met with the rest of the group at the Ernakulam bridge at 11.30am. We took the public bus (which is always fun) to Allepey, the journey lasted around 1.30h. Once there we took a couple of tuk-tuks that drove us to the house boat. The boat was great and much bigger than we thought. I´d say that a third of the space is a sort of lounge area with a big sofa and nice comfy chairs. Then there are 3 double bedrooms with an en-suite bathroom each and finally there´s the kitchen & staff area.
Soon after we boarded, the boat left and lunch was served. The food was great: rice, chicken, a sort of grated coconut & fried onion dish (sooo yummy!), some greens and probably some more food that I can´t remember now, plenty of delicious stuff to eat.
After lunch we had some lovely chai and then we stopped in a place where there were a few shops and where they sold fresh tiger prawns. We were offered to buy some to be cooked for dinner but we refused to do so and instead a couple of us got some ice creams and we went back to the boat. For the whole afternoon/evening we were just chilling in the lounge area, contemplating the beauty of the backwaters and seeing the everyday life of the people that live by the shore. The sunset was beautiful as well and just before it was dark we stopped for the night at the shore. As it happens the mosquitoes and other annoying insects started flying around us, it was amazing the number of moths, mosquitoes, some ants with wings and other type of creatures that were coming near us, to the point where we couldn´t even have dinner at the table because the light was just above it and the insects didn´t stop jumping on the plates and on us. Dinner was again delicious.
Soon before dinner we took some nice drinks out and we started playing cards, we had lots of fun playing, listening to music and even dancing for hours. The day before we had performed a funny dance (thankfully hiding our faces behind a lion mask) at the Gratitude party at the school and at the boat we managed to adapt the dance routine to every possible song being played in the ipod. We recently bought some great speakers for the house that we can use with our ipods and we had a great selection of music for the night.
While we were dancing and singing the stuff members of the boat were already sleeping and surely wishing that the party was over. I was the first one to go to sleep at midnight and the rest of the girls followed around an hour later. I shared the room with Chesa and her alarm clock went off at 7am for some ”unknown” reason. I showered and waited in the lounge area for the rest of the girls to pop out. We had breakfast around 8.30 and soon after we arrived to the starting point and we did the reverse journey back home.
It was a great trip, the backwaters are definitely the number one attraction in Kerala for me, the boat was very nice, the food and the service on board great and we had lots of fun. So if you´re about to work in the project at the school and are planning your stay in Kochi, make sure you save a weekend to visit the backwaters!!

Ana

My gorgeous weekend on the backwaters..