Backwaters To The Beach

Crusing down the backwaters of Kerala in the far South of India while the sun sets and lazy fishing boats cruise past while locals wash their clothes and bathe in the shallows is pretty magical.

Unable to afford the beautiful houseboats that can be rented for the night (complete with cook and boatman) we took a (far cheaper) public ferry down the main river channels to the sleepy town of Kollam where we rented a narrow punting boat (complete with boatman) and cruised down the narrow canals into small Keralan villages to observe their way of life.

Our final stop in south India just had to be another idillic beach near the town of Varkala nesteled at the foot of a red sandstone cliff lined with fantastic restaurants with their daily catch on display. There's just about enough time here to recover before the mammouth train journey (around 60 hours in total) up through Muumbai to Varanasi.