I would rather explore the place, walk around and see things. And if I am on a houseboat
in the magnificent & seemingly never-ending Vembanad backwaters of Kerala, TV would
be the last thing on my mind.
As I saw it during my houseboat experience last week, the best place to be on the boat is
to pull a chair near the boat captain (called Sranku in Malayalam) and take in the sights
as the boat chugs along the water, revealing nature's beauty in all its splendour.
But then, every individual is different and if someone wants to ignore all this natural beauty
and catch up on the latest soap on TV, or see a favourite movie on DVD, so be it. And being savvy businessmen, these boat owners have a finger on the pulse of their clientele, and are
always ready to add the latest gadget on board, if that will make customers happy and keep
the cash register jingling.
Almost all these boats come with a 21 inch TV and a DVD player as standard. Our boat also
had them. But unfortunately they do not carry a selection of DVDs with them, which makes these equipment quite redundant. See pic below of the drawing room with the TV set and
the satellite dish (Tata Sky) in the foreground.
In our case, they just had one DVD of a recent Malayalam movie, which they played on
request from a few of our group. But watching TV channels was not possible on our boat
because it did not have a satellite dish. However, I did see quite some boats with satellite
dishes on them. In the pic below, you can see the dish fixed in front of the steering wheel.
Though I am not sure how it would be possible to see TV when the boat is moving, because
the dish is fixed (not movable) and due to the boat being in motion, it would not be easy to
pick up satellite signals on the go. However, when the boat drops anchor for lunch break or
for the night, I guess it would be possible to align the dish with the satellite and get signals.
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