"Newsflash: a wooden raft overburdened by the weight of 15 rusty cars and numerous obese tourists sank today, after some genius benightedly thought it a legit form of canal crossing" was a possibility that ran through my mind as I looked over my surroundings: en route to the backwater canoe trip our taxi had driven up what looked like step-ladders onto an already packed "barge". With tuktuks perched precariously on the edge, our impending fate seemed more inevitable than the loss of readership for this blog.
I'd like to say the canoe trip was worth the terrifying journey, because it was. As we ("we" being me, Lissy and two bearded Belgians - both men) were punted through the canals, we experienced a peacefulness quite distant from the wail of the towns. I half expected our punter (a young, excitable Indian whose name I forget, let's call him Clive) to break out in song a la Venetian gondolier. Fortunately, for all our sakes, he didn't.
Excited by the sight of an ancient local diving for clams as he swam the river (a seemingly impossible task given the water's murkiness), Clive took us round a villager's garden, pointing out the pepper, pineapple, cashews etc etc growing there. Actually quite fascinating to learn how resourceful they were in using the various plants for alternative medicine, despite having the cynic in me recalling Tim Minchin's "Do you know what they call 'alternative medicine' that's been proved to work? Medicine."
Clive handed me the pole, this was it: I was becoming a real man. A punter. Notorious my balance may be, even Clive was impressed with my efforts - the congratulatory bum-squeeze seems a little off in hindsight, though.
We visited a local rope factory, where coconut husks are harvested -in an ingenious, but laborious process - to make string. After Lissy had fashioned a small rope out of coconut fibre using a machine, Clive folded it up and handed to her: "now you can be like the rest of us with our facial hair", turning to me and the bearded Belgians. An awkward silence followed soon after my lack of beardiness became apparent.
Having returned to our hotel, we spent what remained of the afternoon hammocking. In the evening we were given some "black monk" rum (apparently drunk by the Indian army - quite tasty and in a monk-shaped bottle!) by fellow guests who got awkwardly hooned - they were cousins who lived in Canada/India, and they admitted to having Skype drinking sessions together. Just no.
Lissy beard update: pretty ropey
Jack beard update: prepubescent
With love
Ps - Lissy bought a cigarette packet whose safety warning picture looked astonishingly like John Terry (picture below)
No comments:
Post a Comment