Reflections on the canals

More gaps to fill in...this time from our peaceful and reflective time in Kollam.

Kollam street scene

We departed Kovalam at around 9:30am for the remaining two-hour journey to Kollam where we were looking forward to our eagerly-anticipated cruise through the backwaters. Kollam is a typical bustling city, nothing remarkable in its own right, but for the increasing tourist market built up around the backwater canal experience. This is the main reason why we were there and so in the afternoon of the following day we hopped on a bus for what we were told would be a half-hour trip to the village where we would start the cruise. The half hour turned into one hour as the run-down state-owned tourist bus rattled down tiny laneways filled with potholes and the expected assortment of late-afternoon traffic. In India, apart from the standard cars, rickshaws, scooters, motorcycles, buses, trucks and pedestrians, the roads also accomodate dogs, cats, chickens, goats, cows, pigs, elephants, donkeys, water buffalo, monkeys, and ponies! Shanks still often smiles in amusement whenever we pass a cow on a busy city street!

Would all the heavy passengers kindly move to the right-hand side?

We have written before about traffic in India. Let me tell you some more...in India, road markings and signs are taken as mere suggestions, speed limits are universally understood to indicate minimum rather than maximum travelling speeds, and driving on the left hand side of the road may occur momentarily as drivers weave to either side in their attempt to find the clearest path forward. We are going to consider Australian traffic tame after this trip (let's just hope that none of us come back with bad habits picked up here)!

Many trucks are decorated and painted quite garishly like this one!

Anyway, back to Kollam. We arrived shortly after 3pm in a small village where we hopped aboard a boat made from wooden planks sown together with coconut fibre (coir). Along with the four of us was a couple from Bhopal - the man was a commander in the Indian Army so Astrid had to be on her best behaviour for the entire journey (needless to say, she wasn't)!

Aaaahhh life...

Our guide steered us through the maze of canals with a long wooden pole at the ambling pace of about 2km an hour. This was the perfect speed for us to observe village life. Although we felt voyeuristic at times (some of the thatched homes that we passed would have been just metres away from the edge of the canal), we hoped that there would be some positive flow-on effects from our tourism to the villagers whose lives are intruded on in this way. However, it is still not something that sits very comfortably with any of us, especially when we realised how little our guide was being paid for his efforts.

Children from the village

Along the way we stopped to see how the boats that travel the canals are constructed and we also got a quick tour of a spice garden at one of the homes in the village. The backwater tour was certainly a highlight for all of us due to the seclusion and quietude that it provided but it again made us reflect on ourselves as tourists and what we are prepared to do in the name of sightseeing. Just as we despised being seen as commodities in Fort Cochin, I don't imagine that the villagers whose neighbourhood is continually beseiged by tourists particularly appreciate being seen as tourist attractions. This is a dilemma that we have often discussed together and it is something that we are ever mindful of. We are hoping that our behaviour - simple politeness, appreciation and respect - makes our presence a little bit more tolerable!

The villagers from the house where we stopped for our coconut break