Kattumangalam

I awoke at about 7am, after having an ok first night sleep last night! I threw some clothes on and went outside to see if anything was going on, but the only thing around was the hostel puppy. I went back to the room to wake Tom so we could get ready for our backwaters trip today. We were up and ready for 8am as instructed and waited around at the hostel (with no communication of course). There were 7 of us from the hostel doing the Canoe trip today so we were confident that it would be a good day. Eventually a guy walked through the hostel gates telling us to all follow him, to which we all got up and did exactly that, followed him. He lead us to his TukTuk, where he (without communicating) left us on the side of the road whilst he drove down the road with an empty TukTuk....what was happening? He shortly returned, followed by another TukTuk. The group of 7 split off into the two TukTuks and we made our way to the ferry port where we were issued onto a ferry with all the other white people and some locals. After around 1 hour on the ferry we arrived at our “station” and each got off and were directed to a house where we would be having breakfast.

The house was very simple (unlike so many of its neighbours) being made from the frame and plasterboard alone, with no plaster or paint to brighten the place up at all. We were served our breakfast of bread and curry with Masala tea and then made our way to board our canoes. It was 6 to a canoe, we were grouped with a couple from Israel and an older couple from France and we managed to get the front seats somehow! We slowly passed through the waterways passing by some beautiful houses and some very basic and saw wives washing clothes in the water, people bathing in the water, washing their pots and pans in the water and fishing with small homemade stick rods. It was very quiet and peaceful with the occasional engine boat passing us. We did this for around 2 hours and then the sun starting blazing down on us and now being at the front didn’t feel like too much of a blessing... we dipped our hands into the water in efforts to cool ourselves down but that wasn’t really working, as we were appreciating the occasional breeze that would pass. At one point I dangled my hand into the water where he obviously felt something stroke past his hand causing him to freak out and shake the entire boat by doing so...it was just a plant, but safe to say I’d never moved so quick! We were dropped off at a shop and bought some snacks, we each had a samosa, a savoury donut thing that we didn’t know the name of and a banana and were quickly back on our canoe to go back to the house where we had breakfast this morning. It was boiling hot, nkt helped by the lack of breeze and the very slow pace we were being canoed along at. When we eventually got back to the plasterboard house, we were served rice with a variation of different curries for lunch and it just kept coming! After lunch we had tea and then went to get the ferry back to the town - all in all a great trip for £10!

Instead of getting a Tuktuk back to the hostel we decided to stay in the town for a little while and walk back to the hostel. I wanted to find some flip flops and a bag, and I wanted to look for a vest...we both failed in our hunt but instead found some good snacks! The nut-man served us warm peanuts and some sort of wasabi peas, which were delicious and cheap! On the walk we were separately intercepted by a few groups of school kids who found whatever we said hilarious! We eventually got back to our hostel, and chilled out for the rest of the evening.Read more