Playing house on a boat

No one can argue with the lazy cruise of a houseboat on a river.

In sharp contrast, there are plenty of objections to be raised concerning crowded, overnight, sleeper class trains.

Anyway, it took one to get the other. And all together, they make a weekend adventure.

This weekend was Konaseema, Andrah Pradesh. Our first trip with companions, Pranav and Pratik, both from Gujarat via Bombay. We were signed up for a 24 hour ride on a houseboat, which turned out to be a 6 hour ride and overnight docking on the river just behind the tourism department's hotel. This change in plans was fought tooth and nail, (but ultimately, unsuccessfully), by Pratik, who displayed a propensity to harass the staff for the rest of the weekend. This includes twice threatening to enter the kitchen and see what the hell they were doing, as they told him chapati would be fried (it isn't) and the pakoras would take half an hour (they shouldn't). We would laugh behind our hands when he started up, seeing the mock incredulity at their incompetence even where I couldn't understand his Hindi. Then he'd smile, shrug, and wait for them to figure it out, anyway.

Friday night, the four of us boarded in Hyderabad. Bartley and I haven't traveled sleeper class yet. This is a 3-tier (6 person) non-A/C arrangement. The windows are barred. The cabin is way dirtier than I've seen one so far, and I soon found out that Pranav was searching for a newspaper not to read, but to clean the vinyl(?) bunks with. I remarked that at least we'd put sheets over it, anyway, and Pranav, smiling sadly at me, realized that I thought we were going to get sheets in sleeper class. Oh. Luckily, dupattas are super-utility.

It's a little louder with the windows (er, barred holes) gaping by your head, and when it starts to rain (first of the season!) around 3am, I figure out pretty quickly how to slide down the wooden shutter. But all is well, it gets us where we're going.

The boat is awesome. We cruise out to an island where a very old, dark and stringy-muscled man squats in the grass and hacks open fresh coconuts for us to drink the water and eat the gelatinous, creamy raw meat-- more like sushi than fruit. Tastes quite unlike any coconut I've had before. Then we all have, like, 5. The water is almost fizzy and a little sweet, a little sour, the meat is so moist and soft. We pet the fuzzy brown calf and feed it grass. Pranav climbs the palm and Pratik tries his hand at the machete, until the old man stops him for fear his try will lose his hand.



The river is filled with gigantic jellyfish with tentacle shaped like carrots. But somehow, there aren't many where the boat is docked so we jump in. From the roof. My nose starts bleeding upon impact and everyone thinks I am dying. We have to insist to the tour guides (who giggled at us swimming) in a mix of English and Hindi that I'm FINE, though even Pranav keeps asking me if it hurts, anyway. Then he makes me swim closer and closer to a jellyfish so he can get a picture of me with it, prompting threats from me of what will happen to him if he should direct me too close (as I can't see the jellyfish while submerged).

If you sit at the edge of the boat's roof, and listen really hard over the Hindi jams the boat tour guys are busting out, you can hear the sounds of the adjacent palm tree forest. Birds and insects. Some of the most comforting sounds in the world, and no matter how weird they are, they always make me think a little of home. Maybe because nothing is more beautifully weird than a chorus of cicadas in the summer evening of the American South.

After dinner, on our way back to the boat, one of our day's tour guides points his flashlight into the water by the barnacled boat's base. He shows us the fish there: "small size", he pointedly indicates as the beam flashes over some tiny nibblers, "big size", as the light swishes to a much bigger biter. He grins hugely, pleased with himself and his tour-guiding.

The next day, we cram into an auto(rickshaw) to go see what's billed as the "river/sea mixing place". Bartley and I swim in the ocean, but the waves are too aggressive and the bystanders too curious for me to enjoy it much. We take a motor boat up the river to the sea, where the water changes color and the waves start. Dolphins are all around, but none come close to the boat, even though Pratik harasses the driver to cut the motor several times so we can wait in silence. We see a beautiful, unfinished temple, and a bigger one built on top of an ancient one. We eat strange spongey dosas in the town dhaba and dry our beach clothes out by hanging them on the rails in the auto.

Then a sleeper home, with little sleep to be had.