It’s a charming place — lovely place settings, great china, fun variety of teacups. The food was fabulous. It started with delicious heart-shaped scones with cream, lemon curd, and jam — SO GOOD! Then they had tea sandwiches — cucumber, turkey salad, brown bread with fig spread, and humous and red pepper wraps — all in delicate tea sandwich form. Then dessert was wonderful — poundcake dipped in ganache, lemon tarts, cheesecake, and shortbread cookies with jam.

The tea we were served was the house blend, and it was excellent. I highly recommend this place. The proprietor and hostess, Peggy, was extraordinarily welcoming and explained everything. We had a really lovely time.

Sujal and I are both very excited. Perhaps soon I can post some preggie photos.

Check it out. He’s pretty darn good!

Here was an odd aspect. I really wanted to do this tour, because the novel (The God of Small Things) is set in a village that is along the backwaters. I wanted to see the scenery. But, you are basically touring people’s neighborhoods. Granted, it was on water, but the American equivalent might be if foreign tourists rented RVs and toured around suburban streets. We actually “parked” in front of someone’s house for the night. I know the residents must be very used to all of the tourists, but it’s got to be very annoying. I cannot imagine waking up and seeing an RV parked in front of my house with gawking tourists. (And that is basically what we did.)

We saw rice fields growing famous Keralan rice, which is very different from basmati. There are a lot of photos from the houseboat tour, so I will simply let you look at them below. Click on individual photos to enlarge them.

A note about the photos: the long skinny boats full of men are snake boats. They are preparing for the famous snake boat races. The hammers and sickles are indicative of the strong presence that the communist party has in Kerala, which plays a large role in the novel The God of Small Things. The rest are photos of views we saw while on the boats — or pictures of my family.

After we got off the boat (into pouring rain), we got into a car for a twisty ride up to Thekkady and the Periyar Wildlife Preserve.

We spent one day swimming there and hanging out at the resort. Again, being monsoon season, we were one set of few guests, so we had the place to ourselves. We stayed at the Turtle Beach Resort, which was lovely, but this is where our reservation trouble began. I won’t bore you with the details, but if you plan to travel Kerala, I recommend the CGH Earth group of hotels over the ABAD group of hotels. The ABADs were very nice, but we just kept running into trouble with our reservations, and the CGH hotels are really nice (and eco-friendly!).

Thus began the rainy part of our trip (click on the photo to enlarge it, so you can better see the rain):

Keep in mind, it was monsoon season. Frankly, it did not rain as much as we expected. As we moved into the interior of Kerala, it rained more and more, but for the most part, we had decent weather considering the season.

The night we stayed at the Turtle Beach Resort, we went to a lake resort for dinner (one that involved a very long drive during which we got lost), which was a very lovely place. We had a delicious dinner of fish and crab.

Here is a cute family picture by a Krishna statue:

The next morning, we headed to our houseboat for a backwaters tour.

Kerala was a wonderful place — so different from Delhi — quieter, cleaner, greener, cooler. Kerala was the reason I wanted to go to India in the first place. I loved Arundhati Roy‘s novel The God of Small Things, which is largely set in Kerala.

Fort Cochi is a port on the Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean. They have been dredging the bay so larger container ships can come into port, but the port has historically been a center for the fishing trade. Along the coast, one sees many fishing nets — Chinese fishing nets.

There are also small fishing boats.

Because there are many fishmongers there, unlikely customers (who may be unlikely to pay) show up as well.

We even saw a customer looking over his purchases, one of whom was trying to make a break for it. A crab darted toward the sea, and frankly, it was sad to see that last desperate effort. The customer nabbed him before he made it.

As I have been mentioning, there are wild dogs all over the place. We saw this cute dog…

…and then we saw her pups in the greenery behind her:

It is said that the Syrian Orthodox Church was brought by St. Thomas the Apostle in 52 AD, so Christianity is very common in Kerala and throughout much of the south of India. The Portuguese later brought Roman Catholicism to Kerala in the early 1500′s. Churches there are highly decorated (inside), unlike the stark churches of New England. Here is the Santa Cruz Cathedral:

We stayed in a lovely guest house, the Grande Residencia. Because we were there off season (monsoon season), we got great rates. Unfortunately, that also meant a number of restaurants were closed. We ate at one particularly bad “italian” restaurant. The restaurant, an outdoor number, next to our hotel was very good. Stick with seafood in Kerala. Oh — and order the Keralan paratha. Oh my god, is it good! It’s made with coconut milk. Yum!

Our time in Fort Cochi was pretty relaxed. We strolled around the coast and did a little shopping. My niece and nephew had a great time in the pool.

The second night there, we went to see a Kathakali performance. I really wanted to see one, especially because it is referenced in The God of Small Things. I’ve got to be honest — it was not at all what I was expecting. It clearly takes years and years of training (they said six) to perform this art — a story dance filled with non-verbal gestures that tell the story. There is some singing, but the bulk of the story in conveyed in complex movements, including eye movements and stylized facial expressions. It is a painstakingly slow process to communicate the story, and in its traditional forms, kathakali performances begin at about 8pm and go on until sunrise. They are religious in nature, and traditionally, they are performed at temples. We saw a performance at the Keralan Kathakali Center, where they gave is a primer before the two hour performance.

Here the actors are applying makeup:

This is just before the performance:

A man made these prints using a chalk-like powder. The performance surprised us all. The demon made this screeching sound that truly sounded demonic. The nuances of all the movements were pretty amazing, but as a short attention spanned westerner, I think I’d have a hard time with the all night performance.

After Fort Kochi, we were off to Alleppy, Marari, and the houseboat on the Keralan backwaters.