Bye Bye Mundane Life!!: Alleppey / Houseboat

We are arrived after a short 1.5hr bus ride to Alleppey ready to charge into the houseboat hunt with a price budget firmly fixed in our minds of 2,500 Rupees (= 31 quid). Our guesthouse had tried to sell us their houseboat straight off for what we thought was a crazy 3,500R pricetag! Little did we know until we started pounding the streets that this was the going rate right across the board for a bog standard one bedroom houseboat. Now this is the starting rate at the bottom of the ladder, and they go way, way up depending on the level of luxury you require - for instance we saw supersized ones with two floors, fancy balconies, Sky TV, grand dining tables, you get the picture...To cut out the middle-man seemed to be the only way we'd get anywhere near our price. Thanks to our inquisitive wanderings it wasn't long before we stumbled across a couple of houseboats moored up on a back canal. Our barterring skills were good and we nearly got down to our price but stumbled at the final hurdle, over 2 pounds! We truely felt that we weren't going to get a houseboat and instead started considering a short canoe trip around the local backwaters - a much cheaper option. To take our minds off this dilema we took a stroll out to the nearby beach (Chris totally shocked to find the beach as he didn't realise we were by the sea - dur!), and gorged that evening on a new found meal of "Meals" - this is a dish similar to a thali but with no chapati just tonnes of rice and side dishes of curry that are constantly refilled after every mouthful making the whole meal almost impossible to finish, oh and it only costs 18 pence! The next morning we resumed the fruitless search for our perfect low priced boat trip. This was on a full belly of 'idlis' another favourite meal (steamed rice sponge cakes smoothed in coconut chutney and curry) and as we'd picked a real locals hangout there was no cutlery just your food served on a banana leaf and your right hand to wolf down the messy slop! Just like our fellow dining companions!
Low and behold we were approached on the street by the supposed owner of the boat we'd seen yesterday who agreed to our price of 2,500R if we left that day. Sweet as bro! What a result!
We boarded the boat, lugging our rucsacs behind us - a whole hour early from our departure time at midday in order to keep track of our deposit, this allowed us to fully explore the boat with no crew members around although we weren't parked up in the most picturesque spot (dirty back canal near construction site). As a free added bonus we watched a big group of policemen wander past our boat only to return 20mins later carrying a stretcher with a corpse on it - Chris's first witness of a dead body (the arm sticking vertically out of the sheet fixed by rigor mortis!). When we eventually set sail the sun was shining and it was a absolutely perfect day to be on the backwaters of Kerala, slowly motoring along wide open waterways watching the world pass by. We felt like Lord and Lady Muck on our private veranda, that was until we started to pass other boats - and boy were they fancy, suddenly we felt like we were sat in Georgie's Micra floating along! We moored up for a big tasty lunch, the three crew at our disposal, only hindered by the fact that they didn't speak English! The weather changed that afternoon blowing in big black storm clouds and we were treated to a pretty impressive lightening show with loud cracks of thunder breaking the silence! Soon we'd moored up for the evening along with about 20 other houseboats lining this stretch of canal where we watched the rains come down while listening to music, reading and being fed again with more tasty Indian food. It was actually rather romantic - a nice bottle of red would have sealed the deal!
The next morning after a pathetic breakfast of toast and jam we slowly made our way back to town watching the locals heading off to work/school on ferries and small dug out canoes. For all we'd hummed and harred about doing this whole houseboat cruise we both really enjoyed it and felt pleased we'd given it a go! Did very little for the rest of the day other than eat and do a little bit of shopping, getting ourselves a nice early night ready to move on tomorrow to our final destination in Kerala, Thrivandrum.