It’s impossible t describe the time and place where I’m writing this morning. It’s just past 6AM and I’m sitting on a houseboat tied up to jetty in the middle of a huge lake. The sun is just about to come up and it’s nearly silent.. just the sound of a few gulls and some fish jumping in the water. The jetty is part of a system of narrow (3-4 meter) strips of land that are tied together that were built about 400 years ago to divide the lake up in to smaller parcels. I think I heard that there are over 400 Km of these jetties in this huge (600 KM long) lake. The actual shore of the lake is visible a few km off in the distance. We are truly in the middle of nowhere.
There are 4 crew members on the boat, 2 pilots, a butler (?) and a cook.. and the three of us.. The boat is about 25 meters long and 8 meters wide. It has three bedrooms.. ours, a spare and the crew’s. Ours is even air conditioned.. There’s a huge kitchen in the back that keeps churning out delicious Keralan food every 2 hours or so. It’s both luxurious and kinda rustic. Last night our traveling friends Linda and Patrick joined us here on our boat for dinner. Their houseboat is moored about 50 meters further up the jetty. We ran into them again out on the lake late yesterday afternoon !. In a half hour or so, we’ll untie from the jetty and motor towards Allepy where we’ll meet up with Manooj again for the ride down to Kovalum.
Right now I’m watching two fisherman maneuver a long wooden canoe with long bamboo poles in search of .. what ? Probably fresh water shrimp. These canoes keep coming out to us to try and sell the shrimp that are about 10 inches long.. (oops.. just realized I’m mixing English/ metric). What’s amazing is that these fishermen live in houses that are built on these jetties. I think they only live in them during the dry season.. (wow.. a heron just took off behind me) .. These houses are perched on the narrow jetty and are only accessible by boat. Some of them have a cow for milk and a few dogs. The cows must come out in a boat ! It must be a strange and peaceful life
Speaking of strange and peaceful life.. I’m thinking as I write this how I’ve only been talking about what’s going on around us on this trip.. and not so much about what’s going on inside us. The trip has really been wonderful in nearly every respect. The sights, the people, the food.. It’s also been personally very good for us.. The time together has been just what we needed.
For myself, it’s been the release from everyday things that I’ve needed so very badly over the past several months. As the layers of my busy life fall away it’s allowing me to think about myself and my family in a way I very much need to. Being out here on this trip has allowed me to think clearly for the first time in months about what I need to do with my life.. to honor Sam and to fully live my life. I can see how my priorities have gotten clouded again over the past several months.
I’ve been waking up at around 4AM every day thinking about Sam .. sometimes I’m thinking about those very difficult days after his accident.. more often I’m thinking about his life. Sometimes it’s painful.. sometimes can feel Sam so strongly. I treasure these moments for that.. no matter how sad they can be. This trip has been really, really good for me in that respect.
Anyway… looks like the rest of the boat is waking up.. so I think I need to go. I’ll get the pictures from the houseboat loaded and call it a morning.
Before we left Thekkady, Gabe put a SamStone in the pond at Spice gardens. 
The folks at Spice Garden were so attentive and so sweet. It took a half an hour to say goodbye to them !. Many of them had come to us to talk about Sam.. I’ll never forget their kindness. 
Here’s Deepestra and Jobin, the guy who helped us get our charger back.. Thank you !
They all lined up to wave goodbye .. it felt like a family send-off !
The rains last night flooded the streets even more.. it was nearly to the doors of the car. 
We got out on the road about 9:15.. I realized that my camera was now broken (my backpack fell on the floor).. We switched to Gabe’s camera. Here are some sights from the road. 
We caught and passed Patrick Linda and Raj.. Ha !
We stopped at a tea processing factory . Here are the houses where soem of the pickers live. 
Today was a Keralan Hindu holiday. This car was on a pilgrimage. You can tell by the flowers. 
Here come Patrick and Linda again !
This is strong communist country. They say it was he first deomcraticlly elected communist government in the world. It’s pretty cool. 
Here’s the tea factory.. we got there about 10 minutes before it opened. 
Here are the leaves in a washing hopper
This machine takes out the sticks and stems.. The tea then goes through a grinder, fermentor and dryer. 
The dried tea is graded by grain size. This factory only makes powedered teas.. not leaf teas. Tea dust was everywhere.. they had broom to keep cleaning the wall. Everyone had face masks on.. except us !
We took off from the tea place and started decending from 1000 meters towards sea level. Lots of twists and turns. Small towns, big towns, crazy drivers.. etc. 
We came across this beautiful church on top of a hill. The setting was unbelievably gorgeous 
We passed our friends Freida, David and Roddy from Scotland. Everyone is doing about the same things so we keep bumping into one another. They’re great !
Another (!) beautiful waterfall
We stopped for tea and Linda and Patrick, Frieda, David and Roddy stopped too.. they hadn’t met so that was fun. We ate fried bananas and Chilli-graham fritters and drank masala tea. 
Hey Chai.. this picture is for you ! (We miss you doggy !)..(You too Scott !) 
We came across a cattle market.. Too bad the camera doesn’t capture smells ! Some of these things looked more like water buffalo’s than cows.. They’re horns were painted beautiful colors.. They could all stand to gain a bit of weight too.. We still haven’t figured out which cows are holy and free and which ones are for meat.. 
Here’s a truck being loaded with raw rubber from one of the many rubber plantations. 
We came across a working elephant on our travels.. he must have been working in the forest. 
Shortly after that we turned down one of the small tracks that lead along the canals. Our houseboat was moored there. 
Here’s our boat and it’s friendly crew !
The place is crisscrossed with canals instead of roads.
Bye Manooj.. see you tomorrow !
Mathew guides us out of the canal and we’re on our way. 
Here’s our room.. nice !
There are tons of small boats in this lake… most being poled or paddled, but a few under sail. 
Nothling we had to do now except watch the beautiful scenery roll by. 
Fisherman kept approaching the boat asking if we wanted to by tiger prawns. None for us.. 
The first of several meals .. they were all delicious. 
We’d moored for lunch.. we got off on this concrete peer in the middle of nowhere.. water on all sides. No people. We’d thought about hiding from the crew as a joke.. but the prospect of getting left there wasn’t very fun. Gabe found a great place for a samstone.. High on the trunk of a tree. 
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Linda and Patrick again !
They let Gabe steer for a good long while. His second boat piloting experience for the trip. 
We saw so many cool things.. Like this beautiful 400 year old church out on the jetty.. accessible only by boat. 
The boats are so nicely built. Ours is one of 650 that are working the backwaters of kerala. 
Here are some more of the crazy houses perched on these narrow jetties. These houses may be remote.. but they are not without creature comforts. 
Here’s why we didn’t want to eat the prawn’s… Sanitation is not priority number 1 here. 
Here’s a bunch more scenes from inside and outside of the boat. 
Diane caught the sun just right so it gave her green stars in her eyes. 
We came up to this power pole just moments after it fell into the water. Even though the power was out, everyone was pretty nervous about crossing it with the motor running.. so they backed up…took a run at it.. and killed the motors and coasted over
The law says they have to stop moving by 5:30.. so we docked on a jetty in the middle of nowhere. There was a great subtle sunset beginning. 
Patrick and Linda again !. They parked a few meters up from us. 
We all took a walk up the jetty to near the end. There was a boat taxi stop there even though there was only about 3 houses in walking distance. 
We got back on the boat and started in on the beer/soda with our friends.
The boat guys worked it out so that Linda and Patrick could eat with us.. Both sets of cooks did their stuff and we shared all the dishes. It was fantastic.. chapatti, okra curry, dahl, mixed veggie curry, pickle, kerala rice, chicken curry and papadoms. Yum
After dinner, Gabe did some more work on his homework… He’s really doing his work on this trip. I’m proud of him. 
Around 8:30 our friends headed home and we went into our room. We watched a few parts of some ‘Bollywood’ Indian musicals then put in one of our videos.. I lasted about 5 minutes… then was fast asleep. I woke around 4:30 as I’ve been doing every day for a while.. I lay in bed until about 6AM.. then went out on the deck to watch the sunrise.. which is where this blog began..
At this point we’re now at the Leela Hotel in Kovalum.. it’s a beautiful sprawling place on the beach near Trivandrum. We’re going to spend two nights here just chilling out. . We spent an hour or so in the beautiful Arabian Sea. Then bacl up to the room to rest. Gabe’s feeling a bit under the weather.. so hanging out sounds just right
I’m hoping to find soem internet in the hotel tonight. It feels weird to be so out of touch with everyone we know and love.. At the same time.. it’s nice to be on our own. More tomorrow. Love you all .. Love you Sam..
-us