The next morning we headed south to the “Venice of the East” along the Arabian Coast, Allepey, famous for  vast twists of canals and backwaters , to spend the night on a 3 bedroom houseboat made entirely with planks of jack fruit wood tied with anything but nails! A couple of hours later, we boarded the boat from Kottayam and were welcomed by our courteous hosts perpetually at our service. We cruised along the backwaters surrounded by ubiquitous palm trees and paddy fields sipping on tea after our delicious lunch to the caws of black crows and the faint sound of engines.

Backwaters you ask? It’s shallow water that was formed because of flooding, heavy rains, and irregular currents from the Arabian Sea that flowed down through streams and rivers to create what it is today. Analogous to mosquito breeding habitat, backwaters are totally exclusive to Kerala and nowhere else in the world!

A tsunami of mosquitoes raided the tranquility of our surroundings to nibble over what was left from dinner we picked out at the fish market on the banks earlier in the evening. We’ve never seen so many come on to us and suddenly it was a battlefield. Honestly, for those of us who willingly spent the night in THEIR habitat, we complained so much.