Kerala Backwaters

I had come across a tour put together by one of our Indian destination partners. It seemed ideal - we'd heard much about the south of India from friends, and how beautiful the Kerala Backwaters were.

We decided Easter was the best time to visit, it would give us a good length of time to visit, and it would be just before the climate was too hot to visit.

The short tour would take us from Cochin, to the cool hills of Munnar, onto Periyar and its nature reserve, onwards to Kumarakom, where we'd board our own Rice barge to cruise the backwaters, before spending 5 nights at the beach resort of Marari.

We didn't get off to a great start, the first thunderstorms of the season along with coastal fog, meant a 2 hour delay on our first flight, it will be of no surprise to our friends that we made the connection, but our luggage didn't!

We started with a short orientation tour of the Fort Cochin, which gave us a good starting point for exploring on our own later. Cochin was very hot, we stopped in one of the many coffee shops for some lunch and a cold non alcoholic drink, we found out later the sale of alcohol had been banned.

Later that afternoon we were taken to a local venue to see a Kathakali dance, we also arrived early enough to see the performers apply their make-up for the evening's performance.

Following day after an early start we visited a local laundry to see how the locals offer a service dating back centuries, we then visited the Jewish Quarter and Synagogue, and took a short walk of the area before our drive to Munnar.

We met a new guide for our tour of the tea museum, right in the middle of the plantation. We stayed for around 2 hours watching educational, informative films, and looking at the machinery used for tea production, we later took a short walk through the village.

Every evening the mist would descend over and our driver wanted to make sure we reached our hotel before we got totally socked in.

The next day we took a tuk-tuk from the hotel to the centre of Munnar, we walked the streets, explored the markets and mixed with the locals.

We noticed a newish looking coffee shop, so we decided to stop for a break, we had some very tasty banana fritters, a few home made biscuits and a couple of glasses of coffee, all for the amazing cost of around 80p for everything. We could not believe the value for money. We returned to our hotel for the afternoon of just sitting on the balcony admiring the view before it was swallowed by the mist.

Excellent food was served at the hotel, dinner was a couple of main dishes, usually a meat and a fish, and several vegetable and rice accompaniments

The following day we drove to Periyar, and its wildlife.

Easter was approaching so all the churches were being prepared for one of the biggest celebration in the church's calendar. Even at 5 am they thronged with worshippers. We checked into our hotel and had an evening walk through the bustling little town

An early start the following morning had us join a trek through the park only the two of us with a ranger. He was most knowledgeable, pointing out the variety of wildlife, and the tiger paw prints, which he told us were a few weeks old, thankfully. The undoubted highlight, was on our exit from the trail we saw two elephants at the side of the lake drinking, we watched them for a good half hour before they just turned and disappeared back into the forest, amazing.

This was quickly followed by a visit to a Spice Plantation, where we duly stocked up on some fresh spices to take home. We had an early start to avoid possible problems caused by a general strike, we arrived at the pier just after 6:30 am and our hotel boat arrived shortly after to ferry us to the Coconut Lagoon hotel, on the banks of lake. We had one night there , which turned out to be a great place to stay. We had a large two-storey bungalow, with open air bathroom (a novel experience) and upstairs bedroom. Again we found the food offered by the hotel good value and plentiful.

Next came what we thought was the highlight of the holiday, just after 1 pm, our crew welcomed us aboard our rice boat for our 2 day cruise around the backwaters.

The next two days were spent cruising slowly around the backwaters, stopping when and where we wanted, the chef prepared delicious 5 or 6 dishes per meal, water and tea or coffee was served on demand, along with tasty snack offerings, biscuits, fritters, doughnuts all throughout the trip.

I still don't understand how quickly the days passed, we did nothing other than watch the villages go by, the wildlife, the bird life a plenty, and the scenery changed almost constantly. A trip we'll never forget.

All too soon we were docking and saying goodbye to the 3 man crew, and rejoining our driver for the 20 minute drive to Marari, where we were to spend the next 5 nights.

The resort seemed so very quiet, and stayed that way pretty much all week. We noticed fellow travellers we'd met at hotels along the way, and we'd all ended up in the same hotel at the end of our respective tours. It was great to compare notes and stories.

All too soon it was time to leave, I had arranged a transfer to the airport a day early as we didn't really want a 2 am start, so after spending a leisurely day, we were collected at around 5 pm, and drove to Cochin in daylight on Good Friday, I am so pleased we did, as we passed many processions to churches , one even had a magnificently dressed elephant leading the way.

We arrive at the Courtyard Airport hotel, checked into a large, clean, cold room. We had a very pleasant final dinner, very tasty and very good value again.

It certainly was a trip of contrasts, and I honestly had no expectations, the food throughout was amazing, varied and always tasty. People were friendly, all hotel staff and guides really couldn't do enough for us.

Finally our driver was careful, considerate and quickly got used to our frequent requests for coffee stops.

Just the kind of level of service I expect for myself and my clients, and I would love to be able to send you to share the great experiences we did.

I could not have been more impressed with the organisation by our partners in India, we were treated like VIPs all the way.

Oh and by the way the luggage arrived home,on the same aircraft we did, always a good sign.