House boat trip to Komarakom (20)

On the boat house
It was our backwater boat tour day. We got up early to be able to get to the jetty for noon. It was 180km away from Puvar at Alleppy. It took exactly 5 hours to get there from the time we left our hotel at 6:50 in the morning (the girls were wildly ecstatic about that!)
The boat ride has been fabulous. The rice fields are 1km in size, with an 8ft dirt wall or “dike” around each section. The river has a retaining wall built by the government about (what we could get from our captain) about 200 years ago. So the rice fields are 8 ft below the dike and the river at the moment is about 2 ft. The sections are generally around 10 ft across. Most of the homes are built on this 10ft stretch of land. There is a communal walking path that everyone travels on from home to home to store, etc. Around the lake (Confusion Lake is what the locals call it.) there are 2 streets worth of houses for some of the lake, but most of the homes are built along this very small stretch of land. There are schools wherever there is the land for them. People travel around by very swift canoes and there are excellent ferries just zipping around dropping people off and picking people up.
In May/June the Monsoons come and flood the lower land. Every few years the rains are high enough that many of the homes are covered up to ¾’s of their height. The locals either float on the furniture in their homes or move up to their roofs until the water goes down – usually in about 3 days. It then slowly goes down. When we got here, they were busy pumping the water out of the rice fields and into to the river (an uphill battle!) today they use electric pumps, but before that they used a hand turned wheel system which sounds very similar to water wheel. No one here is overweight! Then when the land is walk able, they plant the rice. The fields are easily irrigated.
It was a peaceful trip in the backwaters. We all slept and read and took hundreds of photos. For the first time in 3 weeks we had lunch. It was a huge spread, delicious and they were disappointed because we only ate about 1/3 of it. We explained that we did not eat a lot, so when dinner came the cook had cut the quantity in half and that we almost ate everything. Most people on this trip must eat until they are bursting! The first game of yucker resulted in a win for Jack and Alex – a rematch is on for tonight!
We stopped for the night at around 6pm. This gave the staff enough time for a swim, and get ready for the night. It gave us time to get in position to see a sunset on this side of the coast. Something we haven’t seen yet. Although it has never rained on us while we have been outside, we have had a couple of days of rain while driving and many nights of rain, but not once has the umbrella come out for rain – just sun. The sunset was nice, but not as spectacular as our own. Again probably because of the clouds that were in the sky. During dinner the fishermen were in their canoes out setting up their nets for fishing. The houseboats don’t move at night because of the nets. The river is dotted with lights as they move around. The second yucker game went Jan and Sam’s way. Sam was the first one to bed at 9:45pm. 5:45am was a bit early for her!
The next morning, Jan and Jack were up early to see the next group of fishermen up gathering snails (they tell us mussels, but this river is fast flowing, very brown in colour and used for everything by thousands of people.) They use a stake stuck in the water to anchor their canoes into the riverbed, swim down them and pick up their catch. There must be some time/event to decide when they start as they (6 boats) were in position for about an hour before one called out something and they all started diving down their stick and collecting. They go down for about 20 seconds in about 5 ft of water, collect the snails and throw them into the bottom of the boat. Sometimes they have a basket they take down with them, fill it up and pour the contents into the bottom of the boat.
We had another great meal – breakfast and then were off the boat at 9:30.