Boating in Alleppey

When I woke up, I found myself in the middle of a large open space with nobody else around. It was rather disconcerting, but thankfully there was Pavel just beginning to stir on top of his dinner tables bed. He looked like a King with his politician cap on.

<- King Pavel

We went to the private beach once again as Pavel wanted to take a dip. It was a big moment in his life, as he was swimming in the Arabian Sea for the first time. After getting ready and having breakfast, we met the rest of the gang who were in the process of deciding the next course of action. Some just wanted to laze around in the resort, while Vidya, Leena and few others wanted to go for a boat ride. I joined the boating group, and we went back to the backwaters where we were yesterday. After some negotiating, we agreed upon a price with one of the guys who owned a boat. It was a large boat, but without any shade to offer to its passengers. Nevertheless, it was a good ride in deep waters till about halfway to the mouth of the sea.

On the way back, Vidya and Leena made up their minds to have a dip right there. Once these ladies decide on something, its no mean task to make them change their minds. The boatman and his buddies had a tough time convincing them to hold back their swimming plans. Once the boat was close to one of the islands, Vidya and Leena just jumped off the side.

They were soon joined by Dilip and Tanya. Now this was too much temptation for me to handle! So I took off my shoes, gave my wallet and camera to Pavel, stood on the side of the boat, and made an immaculate dive into the cold water (at least it was immaculate in my mind!!).

The knight in shining water ->

But swimming with my jeans in the salty water took a Herculean effort, and I soon got back into the boat to dry. Once everyone was on board again, we started our return journey. This time Vidya and Leena had a tough time keeping the boatman and his buddies off of them :D

On the way back, Rex took all of us in multiple batches to a small toddy shop for lunch. It was an extremely sidey looking place filled with drunken shady men, but the food... that was something else! I tried various types of meat from fish, prawns & squid to chicken, pork & beef, and everything they brought to the table was delicious.

I don't remember much of the rest of the trip, except that we stopped somewhere for dinner, and reached Bangalore early on Sunday morning, for yet another boring day at the office :(

To Alleppey for the Snake Boat Race

The Bangalore Couchsurfing community had been to The Nehru Cup, the annual snake boat race held in Alleppey, Kerala in 2008; and they had had a lot of fun there as was evident from their pictures. So some of them decided to repeat it this year as well, and a lot of us who'd never been there decided to join them. It was a huge logistical challenge to arrange for travel, accomodation, food and sight-seeing for the enormous group of 50+ people going from Bangalore, along with many others joining us at Alleppey from different parts of the country.
But Dilip, Tanya, Pramila and a few others coordinated brilliantly and made it look like a walk in the park.

Our huge Bangalore delegation was packed into two 23 seater buses, and we were off on Friday evening. The evil genius that I am, I made sure to board last, which allowed me to make a good guess of which would be the "fun-ner" bus to be in... haha!!

<- Our bus

With the backseat girls! ->

Boy, was it a fun journey, or was it a fun journey! We had an absolute blast on the bus, playing antakshari for most of the time. This is when we discovered what a good singer Leena is. We reached Alleppey in the morning, and after some effort spent in searching, finally located the Pozhiyoram Beach Resort.

<- The lawns of the resort

The private beach ->

During the trip planning stage, Dilip had calculated that each of us would get exactly about 7 minutes to freshen up before we go and get into the boat that would take us close to the finish line of the race. But we were running behind schedule already, so we had just enough time to dump all our bags in some random room and run for the bus. Despite the time crunch, some people decided to use the loo, while others decided to shower and stuff, thus seriously pissing off the trip organizers. In the end, it was quite late by the time everyone got on board our boat and we sailed off towards our parking spot. We couldn't get as good a spot as we would've liked, but it was the best our boat guy could manage.

The chief guest of the occasion was Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, and there were a few opening ceremony rituals, including a brief acrobatic display by the Indian Navy personnel. Maybe the stunts being performed were actually very difficult, but it seemed to me like they were no big deal! After what seemed like an eternity, the first boats started emerging from the distance. Each of these snake boats is a long thin boat with about 100 rowers. There's one guy who stands almost bang in the middle of the boat, and beats a fat stick to the base. This is apparently a synchronization technique so that all the rowers are in-sync. Besides this, there are also about 4 to 5 men that stand and shout - once again in-sync. Each of the rowers exerts a tremendous amount of energy into each stroke, and the boats move really fast as well.

<- Energizer bunnies

One-by-one many different sub-races were held for both men and women competitions. Maybe these were qualifying races, or maybe just different competitions. We simply couldn't follow, because all the annoucements were made in Malayalam; and we were too far away from any of the loudspeakers.

After about 20 minutes of watching the same type of races, I was beginning to get bored. So I got into the boat, met a lot of new people and had a sumptuous meal prepared specially for us. Periodically I would get out to watch a few races, but would promptly get back in as the Sun was quite harsh out there. If you ever go for these races, make sure to carry loads of sunscreen, a good pair of sunglasses and a large umbrella.

<- Houseboats on the backwaters

Random stunts ->

Got back to the resort in the evening and had a shower after a long time (there was a coconut tree inside my bathroom, and it sure gave me a complex, hehe!).

The coconut tree inside the bathroom ->

The hotel guys had arranged for a small traditional song and dance performance at dinner time, after which we all headed to the small private beach for a beach party around a bonfire.

<- Partying on the beach

Some of us started playing poker after the party, which went on till 4 am or so. It was almost dawn when Pavel and I, the last guys still up, headed towards the large common area reserved for the boys. Unfortunately, we didn't have any place on the floor so Pavel joined two dinner tables together and lied down on top. I was not so confident of not rolling off the tables in my sleep so I got into my sleeping bag in a cramped up awkward position where I could still see some floor space. At least a few hours of sleep would be better than nothing at all.