Kumarakom

For our journey from Thekkady to Kumarakom – about 120km and more than 3 hours – we had a driver who seemed to believe that blowing his horn would make the car go faster. I appreciate that the section that crossed the Western Ghats was, just like our previous journey, lots of up and down switchbacks and that the subsequent descent from 4500ft to sea level had very few straight sections longer than about 200m but hearing the horn every few seconds seemed a little excessive.

However, he managed the entire journey without a single phone call and brought us right to our destination, Backwaters Breeze Homestay, which is run by the very helpful Mr Varghese – a retired senior police officer with exceptionally hairy ears – and his very helpful wife. The Homestay is not much different from our place in Thekkady but should be fine for the two nights we will be here. Thankfully it has a working AC unit and a fan since the night time temperature will stay around 24C. A bit warmer than the 15C we have been used to for the last 10 days and a lot warmer than Newhaven which is forecast to be -1C tonight.

It was about 32C when we arrived just after lunchtime. With a minimal amount of unpacking we popped into the open air restaurant next door for some lunch – an excellent fish curry accompanied by rice, a couple of different vegetables and chutneys, and of the course the dish of Curds with curry leaves which I have managed to avoid whenever it has been served in the past. However, the lady who served us insisted that this needed to be eaten with the meal and spooned copious amounts over the rice on my plate before I could object. With thanks as ever to my Grandma’s training, I cleared my plate but think I will keep on trying to avoid it.

The main reason for coming here is to visit the Bird Sanctuary – just across the river from us – which is home to a huge variety of resident and migratory birds. We have a 6.30 start at the bird sanctuary in the morning so guess we will have to miss our morning yoga session. As we sit on the balcony looking over the river, we can see a line of trees in which hundreds or cormorants are roosting along with dozens of Egrets and Pond Herons.

The second reason for coming was to take a houseboat journey across the lake to finish up at Alappuzha in a converted rice barge. However that has proved to be impossible - despite what the various companies say on their websites. They are happy to take you for an overnight trip but bring you back to the starting point - which is also where they moor up during the hours of darkness. All in all it seemed a pointless exercise so we are planning an extra day on the beach at Marari instead.

May have to adjust my opinion of Backwaters Breezes after finding that the shower is only connected to the cold water. To wash with hot water we had to revert to the bucket and jug! On the plus side, the restaurant next door - which has no outside lighting - was happy to deliver a meal to us so we could sit and have our dinner on the balcony while we watched the sun setting over the lake.