Alleppey, Kerala

We didn’t have a whole lot planned for Alleppey apart from seeing the backwaters. I booked accommodation close to the beach, so as soon as we arrived, we headed there. We found our favourite beach bar (and possibly the only beach bar), where we ended up chilling for the first day and lots of other days which followed.

We booked a shikara ride with Oscar Cruises for our second day in Alleppey. Initially, I had assumed we’d rent a kayak and do a self-guided tour, but our homestay host showed us a video from some of her previous guests who went on a shikara ride. The cruise was great. James seemed very relaxed — so much so that he kept nodding off! The backwaters were vastly different from what I had imagined. Some areas were wide and expansive, while others were narrow canals. I enjoyed watching the locals use the waterways to go about their daily activities — some on private motorised wooden boats, others on crowded and weathered local ferries.

From our tour, we learned the route to the backwaters, so we used it for our morning runs over the next two days — though my golly, it was hot and tough going!

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To our surprise, Naresh — our tour guide from Jaipur — was also on holiday in Alleppey with some of his Italian clients. One evening, we all met up for dinner. We ended up back at the same beach shack we’d been relaxing at earlier in the day as the place I had suggested for dinner said they didn’t have any vegetarian meals left.

Aside from the boat tour and morning jogs, we spent the rest of our time at the beach bar. I used a large portion of this time to continue working on my research paper. We of course enjoyed each of the sunsets at the beach bar.

Our train to Varkala was scheduled for mid-afternoon. We needed more cash to pay the remaining balance for our homestay. Up until now, it had been fairly easy to withdraw money once we’d located an ATM — but that morning, it took us over an hour to find one that actually had cash. Our walk took us past several ATMs, giving us a chance to wander around the area — including the lighthouse we had meant to visit but had completely forgotten about. We ended up having to use an ATM which charged a hefty access fee. As usual, it was Indian-style queuing, and we had to almost fight to keep our place in the line. We were really quite desperate for that ATM not to run out of money! We finally managed to withdraw some cash and ended up splashing out on a tuk tuk to the beach café, where we relaxed for the rest of our time in Alleppey before catching the train to Varkala.