Dal Lake houseboats

When seen one right after the other, the difference between a Dal Lake houseboat and Kerala houseboat is striking.

One moves. One is permanently anchored to a man-made bit of land.
One is made with rice mats, replaced every year. One is serious woodwork and paint.
One cruises by palm trees and fishermen. One sits quietly nestled in a Himalayan valley.

I like good contrast.

The cruise with views

One of the best things about the houseboat, is that all I had to do was sit there and the sights and pictures came to me--how nice is that?

In the backwaters, you get to see a lot of things.
I made a list:

Cows
Buffalo
Birds
Backyards
Laundry
Construction
Trucks
Store fronts
Pretty painted houses
Rice fields
Floating plants
Palm trees
Bananas
Fishermen
Reflections
Sunsets

The boat, er, boats

So when we arrived at our houseboat, met the staff and were given our "Welcome Fruit Basket", we settled in to enjoy our floating adventure.

Boat One (because, yes, there were two) was a great boat. It had two bedrooms, and a spacious front room with an "entertainment system" (Seriously? Who wants to watch tv when a whole world of sights is passing right beside you!) and nice woodwork. And, of course, the kitchen where the chef made all his chopping noises.

Somewhere was the engine. I think it was under the floor of my room (noisy).
It was that engine that gave us trouble.

We made it through the first day and the boat was moored for the night.
There was trouble with the engine, we were told by the staff at that time, but a mechanic was coming and he would either fix it that night or come back in the morning and fix it then.
Okay. No worries. We ate our nice dinner, watched the sunset, and then the boat rocked us to sleep.

The next morning, though, the departure time was delayed, and delayed some more, and finally suspended all together.
A new boat was coming, they said.
And--finally--it did.
Quick as possible, we and all our belongings were transferred to the new boat and we were off--pulling Boat One behind us. An hour or so later, we left it behind and continued our journey on Boat Two.

Sadly, Boat Two was not quite as nice.
It was an older boat. All of the rooms were smaller. And it wasn't very clean. I suppose the staff had not really been given enough time to prepare it for us.
What was prepared, was our lunch. The chef from Boat One stayed with us and he brought along all his good skills.
And the engine. The engine was working.

So down the river we went, for more sightseeing.
Really, if we'd never seen Boat One, we might have been perfectly content with Boat Two the whole time.

Houseboat staff

So our houseboat experience in the backwaters of Kerala was pretty good. Much of that had to do with the houseboat staff we encountered.
Though I should also say that some of the problems we encountered were also caused by them. But I am feeling forgiving--just because of the privilege of being able to experience the houseboat of the south at all.

The front man is the guy who sits in the tiny, hole-in-the-wall office all day long waiting for tourists such as ourselves to happen upon him. His best skill is making conversation while we wait and wait a bit longer. He doesn't know quite as much about the trip as you might hope, but it's handy to make friends with him. Especially when you need a refund for something that didn't go right.

Once on the boat, we were introduced to the three men who would be with us for the next two days: the captain, the chef, and the engineer.

In the promotional material for the houseboat, I read that the boat came with "an experienced chef". Experienced in what, I wondered.
It was his job to make us good meals like this one. And tea whenever we wanted.
I would hear his knife start chopping things up around 5 in the morning, and later good things would appear on our table. Our chef was very enthusiastic about his craft, and thrilled to be able to tell us specifics about each dish.
Getting up at 5am to cook for us must have been exhausting. 'Cause when he wasn't cooking, napping is what he did.

Our boat had some engine trouble, which meant that the second day we were actually transferred to a second boat.
In the switch, we lost our first captain and the engineer and got a new captain and a second chef instead.
The first captain was skilled: he shifted gears with his toes.

The second, not so much. It seems we were a bit of a headache to him.
Okay, maybe it was just the glare on the water while he wanted to be taking a nap like the others were.

I thought it was the engineer's job to keep something like engine failure from happening.
Maybe he was more friendly and likeable than skilled.

Conclusion?
Chef One: recommended highly.
The others? Perhaps they need a second chance for higher marks.