On our fortieth wedding anniversary, my wife and I became full-time tourists, which, we seldom are even though we travel often. The place we chose for our anniversary trip was Kerala, a state in southern India on the Malabar Coast. Kerala is where tradition has it the Apostle Thomas brought the gospel to the Indian subcontinent in 53 A.D.
What attracted us to Kerala was the chance to meet favorite relatives of a good friend, visit the beautiful tea plantations of the Munnar Hills, take a boat ride around a jungle lake where wild animals from tigers to elephants come to quench their thirst, visit the town where the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed in 1498, hire a sixty-foot bamboo houseboat for plying the Kerala backwaters along the Arabian Sea—and to be able to do it all fairly inexpensively since we were already in the southern India for other purposes.
The memories of that anniversary trip are rich—seeing how farm folk harvest tea, fending off marauder monkeys set on stealing our lunch, watching fishermen mend their nets as their fathers and grandfathers no doubt did too, and making friends by sharing binoculars on that jungle lake. But it was our two-day houseboat adventure—a real-life voyage through a fairytale place—the enthralled us most. The reason, I think, is because most of us are curious about how other people live and how we are alike or differ. Our floating observation platform was thus a window, offering snapshots of a world that seemed, for the moment, more fascinating and appealing than Middle Earth, Narnia, and Wonderland combined. It was so, because it was a real place with real people, not fantasy fiction or a movie adventure. It was real life into which we were allowed the briefest of glimpses as we sailed along on our fairy tale adventure sans any chance of misadventures. They were only glimpses, but they were enough.
The houseboat included a crew of three: a driver, an engineer, and a cook named Augustine, whose delectable dishes included the banana-leaf banquet at the top of this blog. The bow of the boat was our tea room. It consisted of port and starboard built-in benches, a TV in which we had not the slightest interest, and a round dining table. Behind the bow was a set of stairs to an upper-level room in which we could relax and read or, as we preferred, be mesmerized by the enchanted water's-edge villages we floated by so closely. There were fathers milking cows, mothers washing clothes, children going to school, and littler children waving and, when we waved back, giggling. Sternward, on the main deck, was our bedroom. It even had AC, but we spent as little time there as possible. There was too much to see and hear, too many aromas to breathe in, and too little time for our senses to absorb it all.
As daylight faded and the crew secured our boat to shoreline trees, I began jotting down the sights and sounds of twilight to dawn:
· Dusk—ghost birds alighting in a cinnamon tree; fireflies emulating the real stars (cf. Robert Frost); a concert of frogs peeping, and insects droning; torches moving swiftly along rice paddy paths;
· Late night---umbrella fronds dissipating the full moon’s light, but not its sway; glistening ripples; swinging and swaying in the wake of a passing boat;
· Dawn—palms bending to kiss their watery kin (reflections); silent boats of fishermen gliding by; water taxis full of folk off to work; the smell of breakfast from the galley at our stern.
It’s now been two years since our backwater journey. I’m still taking it in.
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