Yesterday was one of those perfect days. It turned warm in the afternoon and sunny, promising a great sunset.
There were clouds in the west, the kind of clouds that add just that romantic bit of haziness to the air.
The sunset was as good as its promise.
Then an amazing thing happened. The clouds turned red across half the sky.
And as the dusk grew, the sky became as red as blood.
Last night’s sunset was exquisite. The sun’s moving north, and it’s now setting between Sachem Pond and the North Light. Streaks of clouds added vividness and color.
The sun will also, alas, be setting sometime soon over our tenure in this wonderful location. We bought this unique piece of land the year my daughter was born; we built this house twenty-four years ago; and we have been coming here whenever we could ever since. We love this place, and it will always be close to our hearts.
But yesterday the house officially went on the market. The listing agent is Ballard Hall Real Estate, and you can view the listing here.
I hope whoever buys this wonderful home will find that it is a home not just for your visits and your things but also for your heart and for some deep place that defines who you are.
Still moored by the small village, we woke the next morning around dawn. The houseboat that had been moored next to us on the right was already gone, and the village was full of activity. To our left, two people prepared to go out fishing. A boy and his grandmother, I thought at the time, but it could equally well have been his mother.
They are late. All those dots in the lake in the background are fishing boats, already out there and fishing. The sun is barely up.
Meanwhile, the mother is taking care of the laundry, and colorful clothing blossoms on the line.
To our right, across the space where our neighbor houseboat used to be, some men have begun working, unloading a boatload of–muck from some canal or riverway they were trying to clear? fill for some swampy area they were trying to turn into a field? or both? They have exquisite balance, walking along the rail of the boat and then across narrow boards to the shore.
I like the cooperative work of these men, and of the fishermen in Varkala, and I feel sad for the woman washing her lonely laundry.
But our crew has been hard at work too, and it’s time for us to leave. A delicious and plentiful breakfast awaits us as we head out across the lake where the fishermen are still hard at work, and back down the waterways to Alappuzha.
In the stunning green world of Kerala’s backwaters, the people with their bright homes and clothing stand out like jewels–especially the women. We couldn’t make real contact, motoring by on our houseboat, but we could watch them on their way from, well, somewhere to somewhere else, threading the narrow path between canal and rice paddy.
Or going by boat…
…or maybe just preparing to go by boat…
…or hanging out by their houses.
From our lazy houseboat perspective, even the buildings themselves clustered in their small villages or strung out along the canal have a certain charm.
When we docked near a village for the night, Dan and I went out for a walk. On land. Something a little different. And here, as elsewhere in Kerala, I was approached by children. Elsewhere in India, they are likely to be beggars. But not in Kerala. Kerala has virtually no beggars, and certainly not the children. What these children wanted was simply to make my acquaintance, and maybe practice a little English.
“Hello,” they say.
I smile–I can’t help it!–and they smile back. “How are you?” they ask.
“I’m fine,” I reply. “How are you?”
“I am fine. What’s your name?”
So I tell them, and I learn theirs, and sometimes we get as far as, “How old are you?” (That would be me asking them, not the other way around. They probably don’t know numbers bigger than, say, ten.)
“May I take your picture?” I might ask, or they might ask it, in words or in gestures, these bright, shining children. “Please, take my picture.”
So I do.
I don’t remember when I first heard about Kerala. It was years ago. I learned that it had the highest literacy rate of all Indian states–over 90% for both men and women–and the greatest religious diversity and tolerance, with large minority populations of Moslems and Christians. There had also been, I learned, a significant Jewish presence in Kerala from the destruction of the second temple until well into the twentieth century–and that all minorities lived in peace in Kerala. For years I wanted to visit a state in India with such impressive diversity, education, and tolerance.
Also, I knew that Kerala has been a center of the spice trade for thousands of years and is also famous for its tea. The best black peppercorns–Tellicherry peppers–come from Kerala. However, when I mention Kerala to friends and acquaintances in the USA, if they’d heard of Kerala at all, they did not mention any of these things. What they were curious about was:
Were Dan and I going to stay on a houseboat?
I’d never heard of such a thing, but research revealed that traveling the backwaters of Kerala in a houseboat was, in fact, the number one tourist attraction in Kerala. Who knew?!
You just don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve plied the miles of intertwined canals and rivers and lakes in a boat woven of wicker. And Alappuzha, the center of this remarkable tourist attraction, is filled with dozens, if not hundreds, of such houseboats, all waiting to take you on this unforgettable excursion.
As for us, well, if we were going to take this trip, we wanted a certain amount of luxury. Air conditioning, the ability to close up against mosquitoes, and a private bathroom were requirements. The Pickadly Royal Suite Honeymoon Luxury Houseboat filled the bill–and more besides. Forget the mere private bathroom. We had an entire dedicated private houseboat, complete with a full-time crew of three–a captain, an engineer, and a chef. The food was some of the best we had in Kerala, where all the food was phenomenal. We departed the dock in Alappuzha promptly at noon and almost immediately entered an enchanted world.
We, and several dozen other houseboats that all offered overnight trips that depart the dock promptly at noon.
Do not confuse these whimsical yet luxurious vessels with the houseboats that started this whole craze years ago, the ones on which some of the residents of this enchanting region actually live.
Actually, many types of boats ply these waters.
The scenery is idyllic.
Next post: More about the people.
“I think this is the Arabian Sea,” Dan said as we ate dinner on the beach. “The Arabian Sea!” I didn’t know what body of water this was, but–the Arabian Sea!? “Isn’t that where the Somali pirates operate?” Dan looked out at the water, frowning as if he might bring those pirate ships into focus. “Is it?” It’s amazing, really, what we don’t know about geography. “I think,” Dan said, pushing his food around on his plate, “that we’re a long way from Somalia.” But as soon as we got back to the room, we checked. Yes, the beautiful sea we were on the edge of is indeed the Arabian sea, but it’s over three thousand miles from Kerala to Somalia as the crow flies, which is, presumably, also as the pirate ship swims. This seems a safe enough distance. I decided not to worry about it. Despite a vanishingly small risk of pirates, we slept soundly. With a long drive ahead of us, we rose before the sun. In the ocean in front of our hotel–there was a boat!
In fact, there were similar boats all up and down the coast as far as we could see.
The boat landed…
…and soon the familiar tug-of-war began again. And so we came to understand that the fishing activity we’d observed yesterday was the second catch of the day, and that these fishermen are hard at work even before dawn.
Not everyone cared to watch. They’ve probably seen it all before.
The fishermen were still hauling in their catch when it came time for us to go. And even today, weeks later, they probably still haul in a couple of catches a day–undisturbed by pirates.
I ended my trip but began the Indian blog posts, with Varanasi. Time to backtrack now, almost to the beginning. The first stop on the trip was in Kerala–Thiruvananthapuram (a name that I am inordinately fond of, having gone to great lengths to memorize it, but you can call it Trivandrum for short). I’m going to skip Thiruvananthapuram, but I may backtrack here later; I have some pretty neat pictures of a wonderful wooden palace two hours deep into Tamil Nadu but still part of Kerala. But somehow I sense you’re probably pretty tired of architectural wonders.
So let’s skip that for now. Let’s go to the beach.
We arrived early in Varkala, about 10:30 in the morning. We understood that our room would probably not be ready. This was fine. We were happy just to sit near the ocean with nothing to do.
We did not expect to find a serious game of tug-of-war going on just on the other side of our hotel. Wonderful, I thought, that the hotel was organizing games for the guests. But… there was something odd about this particular game. For one thing, where were the women? The children?
Come to that, where were the tourists?
This was no game. This was, it turned out, the local fishermen earning their daily keep. There were two heavy ropes, each being pulled by some ten or twelve men.
As the rope came in, the group on the rock wall moved closer and closer to the one on the beach.
They coiled the rope behind them. At the end of the rope was the end of a very large net, and this too they gathered behind them.
Now both groups, close together, pulled in earnest.
A man riding a kind of a–surfboard?–helped guide in the far edge of the net.
As the net was pulled in, the catch became visible–an abundance of small silver fish.
The fishermen scooped up most of the fish into a basket.
There ensued a heated discussion with a man who, like us tourists, had been only a bystander until this moment. Now emotions ran high.
You didn’t have to speak Malayam to understand that a negotiation was in process. The buyer turned in disgust to leave. One of the fishermen ran after him. More discussion, calmer this time. A price was agreed. Two men took the basket, following the buyer off the beach. The fishermen divided up their gear and the remaining fish. The catch of the day had been disposed of.
Dan and I checked into our room and then went for a walk along the beach. If they could photoshop reality, they would make it look something like this.
The sun, as it usually does, set.
We stopped along the way for a drink (a surprisingly good mojito).
And then later, we had dinner by candlelight on the beach.
Dan and I are back on Block Island this weekend, where the weather is crisp and fresh, cool and sunny. And so I interrupt this torrent of blogging about our trip to India to bring you last night’s beautiful sunset on Block Island, Rhode Island, taken, as usual, from the deck of our home here.
We are truly blessed with a wonderful location with ocean and pond views all around at the very northern edge of the island.
More delicious eye candy from Khajuraho!
I’m pretty sure that the next one is a deity, dancing. But who?
And finally, this beautiful couple epitomizes for me everything I love about these carvings. I like to think they are gods–perhaps Shiva and Parvathi–but anyhow, they seem to be someone important. And they love each other, that’s clear. Look how his hand gently touches her breast, how hers rests lightly on his shoulder. They have so much personality, so much liveliness. Such exquisite detailing that it’s hard to believe they are just two of ten thousand adorning these temples. Hard to believe they are a thousand years old and not just created yesterday. Hard to believe they are made out of stone.
I wish I could share these photographs with you in a very large size. It’s impractical in a blog format–some folks have different bandwidths–but contact me if you’re interested.
Here are some details from another temple.
I love how the central figures in these compositions are flanked on either side by sinuous women displaying their curves.
Below you can see the texture of the wall as a whole, and then a closer look at the detail.
Finally, a god and goddess… I think these may be Shiva and Parvathi.
More great Khajuraho images are still on the way!