Water Lillies and Toddy

At about 3 a.m. the generator on our houseboat gave out, leaving our room dark as a tomb and with no ventilation. Mary accused me of doing something to the nightlight, but she was soon awake enough to realize the situation. There was a lot of banging and clattering for at least an hour before power was restored. I got back to sleep. Mary, not so much.

All gathered on “the mothership” for breakfast at 7 a.m., and as we ate the boat began to sail across a huge lake. Morning fog kept us from seeing shore, but somehow the boatman navigated, even though we saw no sign that these boats are equipped with any sort of navigation gear — not even so much as a compass. Perhaps they use Google Maps on their phones???

After a little more than an hour we entered another small canal, which turned out to be a dead end. We docked and disembarked at a place called Kumarakom, then divided up into three much smaller boats with outboard motors. These took us through some of the smaller channels and marshy areas where we got up close and personal with a great many water birds and gorgeous water lilies.

Along the way we saw all sorts of houses — both those that looked new and very prosperous, and those that looked very poor — but at all of them, people were out bathing in the water, washing dishes in the canal, or doing laundry by beating clothes on a rock. Nothing about this water suggested that the people, cookware, or clothing it touched could be, by any definition, clean.

Eventually we docked at a very small settlement where a Hindu temple was blaring music from loudspeakers. Our tour leader had us walk a short distance to a place where we met a “toddy tapper.” The man had skills.

He shinnied up a palm tree to a place where the tree was flowering (palm flowers are big, probably at least a yard long and 6 inches in diameter, and left to their own devices will, if pollinated, open up to reveal a bunch of baby coconuts). He began tapping the flower very rhythmically with a large bone (probably the femur of a goat).

After a minute or two of tapping, he put the bone back into a pocket on his belt, and from a sheath also on the belt, drew a large, wide knife. He cut off the top of the flower (no coconuts from this tree this season), and used his fingers to rub a mud over the cut. Almost immediately, a milky substance began to drip from under the mud, into a pot that he placed over the flower. The fresh toddy would drip into the pot for about 48 hours, he said, and would amount to about a liter (just over a quart).

Back on the ground, he offered to let us taste some of the nectar that he had gathered from another tree earlier in the morning. Several tried it. Based on the apparent cleanliness of the glass in which it was offered, Mary and I declined.

Before he would let us go, the toddy tapper and his friend insisted on showing us something in a long shed out back, behind his house. What he had there was a 130-foot-long war canoe. In days of old, it was powered by 80 oarsmen, plus about 15 others (the rudder is so large that it takes four men just to steer it!). These boats were used in combat from ancient times. Since the British period, they are raced in contests during local festivals.

Back on our own, smaller boats, we continued on some ways on the back canals. We encountered quite a few ducks, though we couldn’t be sure if they were wild or domesticated. We also passed a cashew tree, where it was ripe enough that we could really see how the seed (the nut) grows outside the fruit, rather than in the core.

Finally, we docked at a large shack painted in bright colors. This was a toddy bar, where men come to drink the coconut palm toddy after it has had a couple days to ferment. The alcohol content goes to about 9%, and men buy and drink it by the liter (again, just over a quart) for 100 Rupees (about $1.55) a bottle. Trusting the alcohol to kill most of the germs, we risked a sip. Definitely an acquired taste.

From here we took tuk-tuks back to our regular bus, and then a bus ride of 45 minutes or so to get back to a place near where we began. Lunch was on the mothership as it sailed us back to where the rest of the boats were still tied up from last night. Most napped during the cruise to our next port of call.

Late afternoon the boats docked briefly to drop us off near a settlement. This part of the waterway is a natural river, and the village on this side had a different name from the village on the opposite side. Poverty here was pervasive.

We walked along the bank and saw homes that were completely surrounded by water. In some cases, planks had been placed so that residents could get from the elevated walking path, across the water, and up to their doorsteps. At one home, rice bags filled with soil and gravel had been placed as stepping stones.

Our tour leader spoke with several residents to learn that the water had been here for nearly two months, because of the flooding of one of the large, cooperative rice fields. It would still be two more weeks before the field was pumped out. Some of the houses were covered with mold on the outside, and we could only imagine that mold must be a huge problem on the inside, as well. Not healthy.

The boats had gone on and docked ahead of us, and when we reached them the tour leader offered to extend the walk for any interested. Normally we would have jumped at the chance, but mosquitoes were abundant in all the stagnant water, and I wanted nothing more than to shower the DEET off of me.

Dinner was a bit better than the night before, and we enjoyed sharing travel experiences with the other three group members with us on this boat. Before bed, we had time to get a few items of clothing washed out in anticipation of the end of our journey.