Time to get out of the town and back to nature! We took a bus from Alleppey down to Kollam and then picked up a tuktuk to Munroe Island; a small island connected by bridges and a boat on an in-land lake.
We stayed in a remote but lovely homestay, which was the only place for us to get meals on the island - fortunately, the home-cooking was of an excellent standard and we had the opportunity to try more delicious Keralan cooking like coconut and cardamom pancakes, Keralan butterscotch rice pudding, tiger prawn curry and more of the classic staples like sambar and avial.
There are no cafes on the island but Our host, Unni, took us to the “lime soda man” - in the corner of a tiny grocery shop, a local has become famous for his “lime sodas” - a cocktail of fresh lime, chilli, sugar, salt, honey and gooseberry or red grapes, blended together them topped up with soda. They are so refreshing on a hot day and he’s apparently now keeping his shop open until midnight to keep up with demand from hot and thirsty locals and tourists alike!
Unni also took us on a bicycle tour of the island. There are few proper roads and lots of mud paths and short-cuts, so it was great to go with a local or we would surely have got a bit lost!
We visited a cashew nut factory - apparently the nuts are imported from Africa to be processed, which includes everything from roasting, extracting from the shell and grading/sorting by size, colour etc. The ladies doing the sorting invited me to sit down with them and have a go - it’s not altogether unpleasant work as they were chatting as they worked, but it is rather poor pay, with ladies earning the equivalent of around three pounds per day.
There was a holy festival taking place whilst we were in town and we were lucky enough to see a decorated elephant wearing gold medallions and an ornate gold headdress. The premise is that the elephant is positioned directly outside the door of the temple, so once the prayers and ceremony have taken place, the elephant in all its finery is the first thing the gods will see when they look outside.
Elephants are typically treated well in Kerala and are even kept as “pets” by some very wealthy people. That said I am sure it must be a lonely existence for a lone elephant, no matter how well it is treated. Apparently temples pay good money to elephant owners for their use in religious ceremonies, which in turn supports their decorated and well-respected status.
One evening, Unni’s father took us on a sunset canoe/punting trip through the backwaters, ending with watching the sunset over Ashtamudi lake, then making our way back to the riverbank in the dark in time for dinner. As the sun gradually went down we must have seen fifty eagles in the sky circling above us, and many storks and kingfishers on the riverbank.
It’s a very beautiful and chilled-out part of the world. All day we overheard music and chanting from the numerous Hindu temples on the island as they sing the holy scriptures as part of their current forty-day religious festival, and in the evenings the air fills up with woodsmoke as the cicadas hum.
More than ever here, being a Western tourist has been like being a celebrity and the locals are so friendly. Some just stare, others smile and say hello, and all the children wave at us as we cycle past. No selfie requests here though!
Next we’re off to the beach, to Varkala, a popular tourist town set around a high cliff for our final stop on this trip. I’ll write again from there. In the meantime, happy Christmas!
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