They love a backwater in Kerala. I thought they were gonna be this super exclusive thing, but nope, they have backwaters everywhere. Even in the middle of the city. Those backwaters are a bit stinky though, not exactly the picture postcard houseboats-and-Chinese-fishing-nets backwaters that they advertise.
Talking of which. First bit of picturesque Keralan waters and there were dolphins, just hanging out. Doing the dolphin thing. In Kochi Harbour. By the Chinese fishing nets. You don't get dolphins in the city centre back in Blighty; Chelmsford needs to up its game.
I snuck out of the city to Cherai Beach, an out-of-season resort town on a superlong stretch of sand where everyone was just lazing - as I guess you do on a beach when there are no tourists. I ate my first Keralan fish thali in about the least restauranty restaurant I've ever seen; a battered patio table beside an old man's house. The food in Kerala is a bit different to the North. You get rice and poppadoms (like a proper British curry) rather than the bread you get in the North. And they love a banana leaf - fish cooked in banana leaf, curry served on a banana leaf, banana served without the banana leaf. The food is still not spicy though, even when they even promised to make it "Indian spicy".
I spent the last day cruising the backwaters (box ticked). The nice ones, not the stinky ones. You could tell they were nice, they were full of water snakes and kingfishers: if there's one thing I know about water snakes and kingfishers, it's that they are very particular about their accommodation.
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