Inland Waterway

When we left the central plain to come up to Periyar, it had been practically straight up (as I mentioned a couple days ago), so we only drove on winding mountain roads for the last 45 minutes or so of the trip. Continuing west, however, we were on mountain roads for the better part of the journey to Nedumudi.

Mary and I staked out seats in the front of the bus because of her propensity for motion sickness, and she also downed a pill. It turned out to be a good move. Midway, another fellow in the group was also dealing with motion sickness, so I volunteered to let him sit with Mary while I went farther back and sat with his wife. All managed to survive the ordeal.

We stopped along the way to watch women picking tea. Another stop was at a huge Franciscan church and school complex.

There is a mixture of religions here, as everywhere in India, but it seems that Christians are dominant in this area. Roman Catholic, Orthodox. Lutheran, and Church of South India (CSI, or merged Protestant) churches abound.

Many are brand new or under construction and most are quite large.

Another thing we notice about this area is the number of newer, large, modern homes. Because of the climate, these are still poured concrete or concrete block with tile roofs, but very colorful and usually with a couple of new cars out front. The economy is apparently very good here, and people are prosperous.

However, we also saw lots and lots of red, hammer and sickle flags of the CPI — the Communist Party of India — which is the majority party in this state. Ironically, quite a few of the big new homes had CPI flags flying out front.

Tea plantations gave way to coffee as we continued down to lower elevations. And lower still, we began to see acres and acres of rubber trees. We stopped briefly at one plantation where a man demonstrated how they cut the trees and drain the sap to make latex. While tea bushes last a hundred years, and coffee trees for a couple generations, rubber trees need to be replaced after about 30 years.

We finally arrived in Nedumudi in early afternoon and transferred from the bus to four “kettuvellam.” The word was translated for us as “houseboats,” but that really isn’t accurate. No one lives on these boats — they are constructed entirely for the tourist trade.

A hundred or so years ago, British engineers designed a system of waterways — interconnected lakes, lagoons, and canals — for the purpose of moving rice from farm to market on barges. They were actually expanding on a much older system. The rice barges are gone, but tourists abound. We were told that there are a couple thousand of them operating here, and the traffic on the canals was about as congested as traffic on the roadways.

The boats are quite nice. Ours has three guest rooms, each with its own bathroom. There is a living room/dining room up front, and a small kitchen in the back. Five of us are on this boat, named “Clove” (the company names each of their boats after a spice).

Most of the time we sail on just our boat. Sometimes we transfer onto the largest of the four boats (which we have nicknamed, “the mother ship”). The rice fields around us appear endless — acres and acres of rice as far as the eye can see, unbroken by houses, barns, farmsteads, or any other visible infrastructure. Although small plots are owned by individual families, collective farming has a long history here. The plots are all planted together as one, huge tract.

After docking along the side of a quiet branch canal where there are no other boats, we got off and walked along the berm a hundred yards or so where some men are staying together in a hut. Our tour leader chatted with them and translated for us.

The rice is very near harvest, so they have elected to remain here rather than returning to their homes at night. This is a critical time. They have just finished pumping water out of the fields to prepare for mechanical harvesting equipment to come in, so they are standing watch to make sure water does not seep back in and ruin what looks like a bumper crop.

We returned to our boat for dinner, and apparently the menu was different on each boat. We had a pretty traditional Indian meal of chicken and vegetables with rice. We smelled fish cooking in the kitchen of one of the other boats. After so much travel, a couple leisurely days on the water will be refreshing.