The backwaters

The backwaters are a huge network of rivers, canals and lakes and it's simply beautiful. The best way to visit them is, of course, by boat, so we left our car and our driver (yes we had a driver; it's one of the perks of coming from a rich country and it's almost necessary when you rent a car in India unless you have suicide tendancies) and spent the day (and the night) on a houseboat. Houseboats are mostly tourism-oriented now but used to be traditional crafts to transport rice . It's quite expensive but was worth every roupie. They say that waterways are heaven for photographers and it's true. While gliding over the water we went into a symphony of green and blue, of clouds and water lilies...of convexity and concavity!

Since houseboats are quite comfy, we found out we had a CD player. We also happened to have a bunch of CDs(not my idea and I was happy we did)so we got to listen music while sailing. Among other pieces, we listened to Tom McRae's third album, All Maps Welcome; "For the Restless" or "The humming bird" especially fitted in the moment. Yeah me! I brought Tom's music to the backwaters. I may have converted some of the inhabitants. Maybe a water snake?

We were lucky on that day for the monsoon gave us some respite and we even saw the sun shine at some point. So I stayed behind the captain who was at the helm, sitting in the sun; I could take many pictures of the beautiful scenery, of the everyday "water-life" people lead on the shores.

I really liked this fishing man...










...and those lonely boats