Taking to the art of Haggling in the Backwaters
India is a crazy country full of crazy people – they are as someone wise once said ‘a nation of del boys’. Absolutely everything is up for negotiation. It was one thing that I feared most about coming here – negotiating a fair price. I pretty much don’t have a clue what somethings should and shouldn’t cost so rather than get burnt for a few sheckles for the first couple of weeks I didn’t engage in any kind of bartering that wasn’t absolutely essential with regards to my survival.
That has changed though – slowly but surely I started first with the rickshaw lads. Its dead simple to bounce one of these guys against another as they seem to be omnipotent in this place. I think I finally earned my cert in bartering when it came to finding a houseboat.
We got off the bus in a town called Allepy which is approximately 3 hours south of Cochin on the now obligatory public bus. We had to stand on this one so that made it a little more interesting. It was really cramped and very warm, it is a good job that the roads in Kerala are by far and away the best that we have encountered yet – the drivers are still certifiable though.
Allepy is tiny so it was impossible to get lost – it was a sunday 2 days before xmas day so I didn’t hold out too much hope in finding a boat for that day but I reckoned it was worth chancing our arm. Outside the tourist office which was closed, there were one or two shady customers. I asked them about the houseboats and they just pointed to a lad in a rickshaw. We asked him and before we know it we are bombing up the road in his rickshaw holding on for dear life. He drops us outside an ‘office’. Inside were two guys, brothers. The younger guy had better english but it was the older guy that owned the boat so it was with him that we had to break the deal.
After the extremely brief niceties we got down to business. Adapting a new strategy i started ridiculously low. 2000 rupees which was met with immediate derision. 6000 was my target as that is what I had heard some others had paid for it a few weeks previous, prior to the current high season. The he offers it for 6, happy days but there was no way I was going to settle for his first offer. I was sure I could get him to below 5, to and fro we went – each coming up with impromtu economic lectures. Eventually we got him down to 5200 and 2 bottles of beer, food and 2 beds all included. The whole process took almost an hour, by the time i was finished, adoni was lying in the ditch curled up in the foetal position. I wasn’t ecstatic at the price but after talking to other people we had actually managed to get it for half of anything else that I had heard which made it feel like a proper accomplishment.
The Backwater experience was something else. It was really beautiful, our food was excellent and we started off in good form with the guys who were working on the boat. They had extremely limited english so communication was an issue, esp when the storm clouds gathered later on when we ran out of beer. The problems really kicked in when they pulled up the boat by the river bank after just 2 hours cruising, I thought it was a bit cheeky and started at the lads about pulling up so early, about what we were promised with regards to 52 kilometers of a trip – we had barely gone 5.2 and most of that was through a big lake so we didn’t see much of the tiny coastline. I must have come across as pretty intimidating, rather than the scheduled 8:30 start the next morning we were to start at 6. Even more bother rose its head when the beer we were promised failed to materialise and that the only beer that could be got was pretty extortionate by indian standards, normal for dublin standards. They did produce this actual ‘jungle juice’ which was derived from coconuts but tasted like puke and pee mixed together, my god it was awful!! Single most shocking thing to have ever passed my lips!!! At this stage we were joined by our neighbours from the boat beside us, australian girls from adelaide. The funny thing was that they were completely envious of our relationship with our crew, their own ones wouldn’t interact with them at all – they joined us in the middle of negotiating the price of 3 bottles of beer and thought it was just pure comedy. From then on we spent a few hours chatting away, aided by the illicit beer and the result of a coconut atrocity before hitting the sack. Mosquitos destroyed me once more!!! BASTARDS!!!!
Next day we got up at 6 and headed off. Relations were still a little sour between the crew and the passengers, we were just about afloat again when we were pulled up again. This time the captain beckoned me off the boat, with stunning grace I jumped off without falling into the river or the rice paddy field the other side of the shore. I followed him along the shore then inland where we met two guys on the way for a swim, I asked these guys where he was taking me and they reassured me that I wasn’t about to be the victim of some scam or shooting so I followed him on. The scene was simple stunning, rice fields as far as I could see, small houses surrounded by sheltering trees interrupted the endless fields now and again. The captain seemed to know everyone, everyone had a wave for him. Eventually we pulled up to a shack, his house. Where he, his wife, his son, his daughter inlaw and 3 grandchildren lived. This house was barely the size of our living room at home and contained 4 bedrooms and a kitchen. In I sat in one of the rooms where tea and biscuits were presented to me. I was in heaven, this is what I wanted to go travelling for. The captain pulled out a load of pictures to show me – he was the local council man and therefore a pillar of the local community. I got to take some pictures of the kids who again were adorable, they were the only ones with english aswell. It was gas!!!
My opinion of the captain changed at that point – from then on in I had to defend him from adoni who understandably couldnt understand why I had changed my tune. The rest of the backwaters trip was excellent, lots of canals, wildlife, village life, islands and lagoons. We had a breakfast of curried dumplings which set us up for the trip down to varkala for xmas by the beach….
Tags: backwaters, India, India, Kerala
Phil Gill
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