Seven people is already too many for one sensible plan, which is how you know the plan is going to be good. Murugan, Gopinath, Venkat, Dinesh, Raman, Muthu alias Lock, and me. August 2009. We left Chennai at dusk with bags under the seats and the kind of confidence that only shows up before the first wrong turn.
Dawn put us in Alleppey, and the town answered with rain. Not a polite welcome. The palms were shining, the road smelled like wet earth, and we stood there grinning as if we had booked the weather on purpose.
The boat that felt like a hotel
Then the houseboat. From the bank it looked like a long, low secret: thatched roof, wooden windows, a cloth pulled over the stern, coconut trees doing their best to upstage it.
We had pictured a night on the water as a nightmare. The rooms had other ideas. Beds, a proper cabin, air conditioning if you wanted to cheat the monsoon, and a crew that already knew the backwaters better than we knew the bus schedule. Our cook was a proper Kerala cook. Coconut oil in everything, and our taste buds filing a complaint and then asking for seconds.
A fish vendor pulled alongside while we were sailing and asked if we needed fish. We asked where the fish were. He smiled, named a price, and waited. Two kilos, we said. Half an hour later he was back with two kilos of fish that had still been swimming when we made the order. He had gone and caught them. We put the cook to work. Fish curry arrived at a dining table that felt like a restaurant someone had parked in the middle of a river.
The captain, who had clearly met boys like us before, let us take the wheel. A houseboat is not a toy, and it still felt like one. Huge, slow, and suddenly ours. We took it toward a village and dropped anchor around six, tied off to a coconut tree in the bay like the tree had been waiting for us.
The village used the backwater the way other towns use a bus route. Government boats came and went. We wandered the banks, stuck our noses into everything, and found a peach-coloured church standing in the palms as if it had grown there with the coconuts.
Out on the open water we were not the only houseboat pretending to be a ship. Two more slid past with people hanging in the doorways, wakes folding behind them, the far bank a dark line of palms.
The snake boat
Then the water changed temperature. A snake boat came down the channel, long as a rumour, packed with rowers in a stripe of colours. Paddles hit together. Spray kicked up. Somebody on our boat yelled. Somebody else forgot to take a photo until it was already halfway past, which is how you know it was fast enough.
We watched them go and felt, briefly, like spectators at someone else's adventure. Then we remembered we still had a hill to climb.
The jeep that won
Kuttikanam looked climbable from the bottom, which is a famous last sentence. The mountain was bigger than the plan. Guides took one look at us and pointed at a Mahindra jeep. The windscreen said Kalloomparampil. The badge on the bonnet said Major. The road said good luck.
The ride was a joke the jeep was telling and we were the punchline. We barely stayed on the seats. I got sick and lost the argument with my stomach more than once. The guide kept talking anyway, pointing out the hill, the trees, the reservoir that fed the whole area, as if a bouncing boy in the back was part of the usual commentary. The air up there was wet and cold and so fresh it felt borrowed.
Water kept finding us. A stream dropped through the rocks under a roof of leaves, white where it hit stone, brown where it rested. We stood on the bank and let the noise do the talking.
From the hills we went on to Athirappilly. The rain had arrived first and set up camp. We barely saw the falls. Cameras stayed in bags, except for one or two brave clicks. A film crew was shooting a song in the spray, and the crowd cared more about the camera than the water. Fair. Both were loud.
What we carried home
Murugan, Gopinath, Venkat, Dinesh, Raman, Muthu alias Lock, and me. Seven names, one houseboat, one jeep, one snake boat that did not wait for us. Kerala in August does not do quiet. It does rain, coconut oil, live fish, and roads that refuse to stay flat.
You cannot take a bad picture from that boat. We tried. Every frame came back as a memory with palms in it. If you get the chance, go. Take more friends than is sensible. Leave at dusk. Let the dawn handle the rest.