Off to the Kerala "Backwaters"

We drove two hours south of Kochi this morning to visit a milk co-op serving some forty families by supplying them with a readily accessible terminal at which to “deposit” their excess milk for purchase, pasteurization and distribution by milk collection agencies.

A little further down the red clay road we spent an hour or so at a public elementary school, one with which Overseas Adventure Travel's charity wing established a helping relationship earlier this year. The school currently is little more than a shell with very little in the way of supplies beyond the basics: shared desks, textbooks, slates for the kids to write on, a raggedy blackboard. The kids, however, ranging from five to ten years old, were ecstatic to see us and kept us going – playing games, reading books, singing songs – until exhaustion set in!

Our last stop was to spend some time with a women's self-help group which has met twice a week for the past six years to fry banana chips or sew blouses for sale to local merchants to earn “pin money” shared among the group of fourteen, an example of micro-financing that has worked remarkably well throughout Kerala.

Then we got to relax for a couple of hours, eating lunch while floating along on the “backwaters” and watching daily life as it played itself out along the banks of the canals crisscrossing this entire coastal area. Heidi and Lee remember our prior experience here in 2008 with great fondness and found this much more brief sojourn equally relaxing.

Later the group broke up into two smaller contingents to have dinner with local host families. Our group of seven enjoyed a particularly lively evening with a family of four, including twenty-one and fifteen year old daughters, a stay-at-home mom and a retired professional travel planner (one who helped OAT pull together its Soul of India itinerary). The opportunity to quiz the daughters about life among the young in India was especially appreciated.

Tomorrow we head off to explore Kochi itself, like its population, one of the most cosmopolitan and diverse entities in all of India (and largely a review of our earlier visit two years ago).