Wednesday 16/11/05 – Fort Cochin To Allepey
We take a taxi four two hours to Allepey, Kerala’s Venice, to board a houseboat and navigate the famous backwaters. Our home is a converted riceboat, with dining deck, two cabins (one for us, one for the crew of three), two toilets and a kitchen. It’s powered by punt, unlike most of the other tourist vehicles with spew out noxious fumes as they chug by, lending this rural idyll the atmosphere of a sleazy Las Vegas ride.

They leave us behind, and we relax into Days And Nights In The Forest. Reading now, for the first time in years, it seems. Already on to book two: Hari Kunzru’s Transmission, an Indian-tinged update of Doug Coupland’s Microserfs. Makes me want to write.

But mostly I want to go with the flow…

We gently drift past grotto ships like hobbit holes at sea. Hover-flies dally and dance over murky water transformed to rippled mirror by the setting sun.

Our evening meal – traditional Keralan fare, with a centrepiece of huge blue prawns on skewers with a stupendously spicy crust – is the highlight of the trip so far.

Next: to the beach at Varkala