La Gringa y Su Esposo: Alleppey - Steamy Canals and Street Food

Catching up a little – Alleppey, Feb 16-21

Now called Aluppuzha, Alleppey is a convenient staging ground for visiting the backwaters of Kerala – the “Venice of the East”. There is a large web of canals and lakes crisscrossing a large region, tying together nearby cities and villages. We booked a canoe tour of the backwaters at the government-run tourist center. Walking the mile there mid-morning was warm, but by the time we ate lunch and headed back to our hotel the heat and humidity were brutal. With highs in the mid-90s and humidity at 60% the weather was similar to a Houston summer. Sweaty sweaty sweat.

Waiting at the tour pickup point the next morning we met another traveler who paid $15 per ticket compared with our $10. We assumed we were on different tours, but then a guy showed up and said he was the tour guide for all of us. After he saw our receipt he took us aside and essentially asked us to please lie about the price we paid for our tickets – apparently he and others charged an extra $5 per ticket and didn’t want to deal with upset customers. “It’s business, you know?” A good reminder that prices are often flexible and to watch out for middle men.

Eventually we hopped on a ferry, the waterborne equivalent of the local bus. We motored out of the canal and across a lake to the tour guide’s house, where we ate breakfast before splitting up into our canoes. The six seater canoes thankfully had a canopy, with the rower/guide sitting in the back. We weren’t expected to help paddle (though offers were made). We spent the next three hours meandering through the canals past houses and small businesses as the locals went about their day. Lots of laundry, dishes, fishing, and bathing. Don’t mind me here with my zoom lens...

We stopped for snacks around 1:00 pm at a small stand in the backwaters. The sun and heat had become stifling and we were done with the tour (though there were still 3 hours to go!!), so we feigned illness caught a ferry back to town from a dock a short walk away. The ferry arrived twenty minutes later and we hopped on, paid our $0.20 for tickets, and had a relaxing ride back to town.

Besides the backwaters, we spent our time hunting mosquitoes in our hotel room (how did they keep getting in??), exploring the town and beach, and eating at cool, cheap local restaurants with delicious tandoori chai, curries, and shawarma.