We took a bus from the port of Kochi in southern India to a tour boat on the Kerala Backwaters, a 125 mile long rice-growing strip of interconnected lagoons, lakes, rivers and canals that lie between the nearby Western Ghats (ghat means mountain) and the cost. The 600 miles of waterways are fed by 38 mountain rivers, but the waterways are brackish due to backflow from outlets to the sea. Much of the area consists of rice paddies on land below sea level reclaimed from the lagoons by dredging and building dikes behind what were originally long barrier islands.
The result is a kind of combination of Venice, Holland, the Louisiana Bayou, and the Intercoastal:
The major expansion and addition of hundreds of thousands of acres of rice paddies came in the early years of WWII when Kerala doubled its rice production to support the Allied war effort. Due to climate and rainfall, Kerala produces several crops of rice per year.
It's difficult to get the perspective from a still photograph, but from the boat you could see clearly that the rice paddies were several feet below the level of water in the the canals and lagooons:
We meandered up and down the waterways for about four hours watching people fish, children going to school, and others tending rice paddies or washing clothes in the river,
It's an interesting and unique way of life but probably not on anyone's "must see" list for India. It did provide us with a jumping-off point to disembark from the ship and fly to Delhi for our long-awaited trip to the Taj Mahal.
The result is a kind of combination of Venice, Holland, the Louisiana Bayou, and the Intercoastal:
The major expansion and addition of hundreds of thousands of acres of rice paddies came in the early years of WWII when Kerala doubled its rice production to support the Allied war effort. Due to climate and rainfall, Kerala produces several crops of rice per year.
It's difficult to get the perspective from a still photograph, but from the boat you could see clearly that the rice paddies were several feet below the level of water in the the canals and lagooons:
We meandered up and down the waterways for about four hours watching people fish, children going to school, and others tending rice paddies or washing clothes in the river,
It's an interesting and unique way of life but probably not on anyone's "must see" list for India. It did provide us with a jumping-off point to disembark from the ship and fly to Delhi for our long-awaited trip to the Taj Mahal.
No comments:
Post a Comment