Backwaters

John:  Our last major excursion out of Kochi was to an area known here as the backwaters--an enormous system of lakes, rivers, streams and canals that are a much-beloved natural feature of the Indian state of Kerala, where Kochi is located. Indian tourists, and some foreigners, flock here for the chance to spend a few days or even a week or two living on one of houseboats that cruise these waters, going from village to village and and eating fish fresh out of the water (the ships generally come with a cook/pilot):

A houseboat on the backwaters. These are now all for tourists; they get quite elaborate, with multiple bedrooms, kitchens, and air conditioning.

We went to Alleppy and got a mini-cruise of a couple of hours on a passenger boat; a longer trip that would go to more remote parts of the backwaters would get even more scenic and rural, we imagine. Even so, I can't say that this is a the kind of vacation that appeals all that much to us; I think we'd get bored quickly. But for people who live in a  crowded city like Mumbai or New Dehli, a week in a houseboat cruising the quiet backwaters of Kerala might be just the ticket.

On the way to Alleppy, our bus passed an elephant walking along the side of the road, about which Aidan has more to say:

Aidan's account of the elephant

Aidan: This is an elephant that I saw in India. I was scared but I touched the elephant. Wow! Elephants are fuzzy. The elephant was walking down the road to a temple.

Meeting the elephant, who was, we were told,
probably on the way to a temple

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John: We have been told many times by both Americans and Indians themselves that the state of Kerala is very different from many other parts of India, particularly the crowded northern cities. Kerala is tropical, green and lush, and while hardly underpopulated, is less crowded and hectic than many other places in India. Kerala also has a strong social safety net, which has led to it's having near-first-world rates of literacy, life expectancy, and infant survival rates. There are a lot fewer beggars on the streets than in other places. Part of the explanation for this is that there has long been an active Communist party here that pushes the political system in the state to the left--we drove by an open-air meeting of the party, with hundreds of people in attendance, on our way back from Chendramangalam village on our first day, in fact. The Communist party undertook a land-reform movement here in the 1950s that redistributed land and wealth in a way that has prevented some of the incredible inequalities of means that characterize much of the rest of the country from taking hold. And the fact that they've had to alternate power with more conservative centrist parties ever since--and thus compete for votes--has kept them from turning authoritarian, as has been the way so often in Communist regimes. You see a fair number of Communist flags and posters--it's been a long time since I saw a heroic image of Lenin, but I saw one here. At the same time, Kerala's way of life is fairly traditional; most of the state's income comes from fishing, agriculture, and tourism, and about 80 percent of marriages here are still arranged--something that is no longer the case in many of the bigger cities. Kerala has not participated much in India's high-tech revolution, which has shielded it a bit from the swings of the global marketplace, but unemployment is apparently very high. So it's not a utopia, but it has been an excellent place to get a short glimpse of India for first-time visitors like ourselves, and we have come to like it well enough to muse on finding a way to spend more time here. Maybe a Fulbright someday….