Travel Virus

Finally I’m in Kerala on the backwaters!! It’s a paradise! After a short stop in Delhi, I took a flight to Cochin (Kochi), the biggest city in Kerala, in the south west of India. I went back to Fort cochin, a beautiful area (full of tourists) and took a ferry to the city (ernakulam) for 2.50 Rs (=about 0.40 euros). Then we took a local bus to Aleppy, “the Venice of India” and in about 2 and a half hours I arrived in this amazing place on the backwaters (mix of river and sea water). There are coconut trees, mango trees, a hamac in the garden and delicious food. Today the host of the homstay, Mr. Thomas of Green-Palm Homes (see the lonely planet), took us for a bike ride in the countryside of Aleppy… awesome!! We biked for three hours between the local houses, all facing the water and the rice fields. After the ride, for relaxing there is nothing better than a swim in the backwaters, as you can see from the picture. As in India there is a full body coverage tradition I’m swimming with all the cloths, which was fun and also useful since they needed to be washed anyway  Then I did some proper washing at the river like the indian aunties do… provoking some laugh of the indian tourists passing by on the beautiful luxiurios houseboats.  

As you see in the picture, Aleppy is not called “Venice” by chance, in fact the boats really do look like gondolas and the houses are built almos in the water. The main difference is that here there are 30 degrees all year and it’s 100 times cheaper!