An unforgettably awesome 24 hours on water.

Well, to be exact, it was 22 hours on water. But there is a certain magic about the number 24, especially in the context of time, which 22 seems to lack. While 24 hours convey the fullness
of a day, 22 seems somewhat incomplete.

Anyway, it is immaterial whether it was 22 or 24 hours. What matters though was it being
about an out-of-the-world-experience of being away from land, home etc and instead being
on a boat in the beautiful backwaters of Kerala.

Spending a day on an houseboat in the Kerala backwaters has been a very long time dream
of mine, which finally came true last Saturday-Sunday. In 1999, I had gone to the Aleppey backwaters with some friends that included a Belgian colleague and his girlfriend. They
wanted to try out the houseboat experience and opted for a 12-hour stay on one of them, spending the night in the backwaters.

Since then, I had been having this in the back of my mind. However, I wanted this to be a
kind of a full family outing, involving my sisters and their families too. And after planning
for a month, it finally happened. Being a group of 4 families, we opted for two 2-bedroom houseboats for the night stay. But during the day, we spent time in one of them so that
the whole family was together and could spend time together.

It helped that my brother-in-law's maternal uncle owns and rents out houseboats and so
we did not need to bother about anything. All we needed to do was land at the Aleppey
tourist office (where all the houseboats are berthed) by 11:30AM, which we did manage,
even though the group was to reach Aleppey from different places.

I was coming from Madras, while my parents, elder sister and her family were coming from Cochin which is some 65 kms away. And my wife, kid and younger sister & her family were coming from Kollam, some 80 kms away. And we all managed to make it on time.

Everyone had a whale of a time, including the sceptics like my elder sister and her husband,
who took a lot of my effort/time in being convinced that this indeed would be an experience
to cherish. The mental picture she had about a houseboat was exactly the opposite of what
it actually was and the moment she entered the boat, she was like, "I am glad you convinced
us to come for this. It would have been so stupid, if we had missed this".

Well, I am glad everyone loved it. Especially the woman folk got a good break from the usual kitchen activities and got to sit back and relax. And that too in the lap of nature.

Since there are lots of interesting stuff to post concerning not just our houseboat stay, but
about the place in general, it would be boring to make it one single long post. So, for the next
few days, all posts will be centering on this topic and hopefully sticking to a single topic each.

I leave you with a snap of what this whole thing is all about - a house boat in the Aleppey backwaters.



Stay tuned for more.