Our Indian friend, the one who can arrange anything, is aware of our concerns. He has promised us a good basic boat but a spectacular trip.
We arrive in Alleppey, one of the main cruise "hubs," and are taken to a homestay on the water where we'll spend the night before boarding the boat in the morning. This homestay is impressive. The property has been in the same family for 14 generations, some 500 years. Our room is simple with two narrow beds and mosquito nets. Outside, however, the gardens are beautiful and serene. In a gorgeous gazebo hanging far out over the water, we eat an amazing Indian dinner, prepared and served by the homestay's friendly owner.
Early the next morning, we drive into Alleppey proper and down to the rice barge docks. The "captain" of our boat hoists our suitcase onto his head and leads us on a very brisk walk over red roads, through a village, and finally, down to the water's edge. There we climb over large rocks and up onto one barge, which we will walk through, before stepping across the water to another: our home for the next 24 hours.
The "captain" gives us a quick tour of the boat and introduces us to the cook who hands us an ice cold glass of lemonade. We can see that our "no frills barge" won't stand a comparison to the other more sophisticated models but, we say to each other, the cruise is the main thing, luxury be damned.
The engines are fired up, reversed, and we are off.
To our horror, we immediately join the back of a long line of barges and are very relieved when the captain, through sign language and a few English words, tells us that we are stopping for gas before heading into the backwaters proper. We are smiling as he pilots us away from the gas dock, against the flow of the traffic, and down into a narrow channel barely wide enough for the barge.
Soon we are travelling through spectacular scenery with emerald green rice paddies on either side of us,close enough to touch, as far as the eye can see.
The waterway eventually leads through small villages. We hear the distinctive slap, slap, slap of clothes on smooth rocks as women do laundry the way they have forever. Children dive and swim in the water. Men, both young and old, perform their daily ablutions. We pass small shops, hidden behind clusters of colorful saris, and see the odd water taxi dropping off and picking up locals.
The day wears on and in the late afternoon, the shores are covered in women fishing for and catching dinner.
From our vantage point, on our very own rice barge, we have watched a diorama of daily village life unfold as it has for centuries, right before our eyes.
As the sun sets, our captain ties us up to a makeshift dock in the middle of a rice paddy. The cook quickly jumps to shore and hooks up our power. Before long, we are served a very perfunctory dinner. Then it is time for us to retire to our "quarters" where we read and have a laugh or two about the bedding which is only half the size of the bed.
Several years ago we cruised the waters of Inle Lake in Burma, close to villages, witnesses to the highs and lows of daily life. We were uncomfortable about that experience and are about this one as well. The impact of the rice barges along the inland waterways is a double edged sword. Economically, the tourist influx has, no doubt, been a boon; environmentally and socially, however, the benefits seem less clear to us.
We sleep with ambivalent feelings about this backwater cruise. We'll not soon forget the beauty of what we've seen but like guests who've turned up uninvited at the door, we're not sure how welcome we've been.
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