A highlight of any tour around India is always going to be the perrenial must-do: The Kerala Backwaters. Very shortly after we started discussing our intention to travel to India, right out of the traps came "you must do a houseboat on the Kerala Backwaters". The guide books scream it out as an essential part of any trip here and having now returned from 48 hours there, I concur entirely. It is a must-do. We are very lucky to have done it. These people are even luckier to live there.
A complex waterway broadly akin to the Norfolk Broads or the Hawkesbury River system - two areas I know very well; the Kerala canal and rivers network in and around Allepey, just south of the Keralan capital, Kochi, is a quite visually stunning experience. I don't think I can recall more beautiful and captivating scenery. I looked forward to a few days of reading and relaxing, but in fact spent the entire time taking pictures! I lack the skills to adequately describe this beautiful place with words, so here is a slide show of some of those pictures. (The new camera with which I took these - after losing my previous one in Goa - I bought only days before boarding this boat is perhaps the best timed purchase of my life!)
For those looking to be more intimate with this delightful landscape but cannot make the trip quick enough, it is best and most famously brought to life by Arundhati Roi in her delightful 1997 Booker Prize Winning Novel: The God of Small Things.