Kerala Honeymoon Trip (expensive) Report - backwaters and bangaram

saikyo

I'm there and back, my 10 day high-class Kerala romp is complete, and was a success thanks to the help of all here, especially CliveG. Here is a trip report that hopefully will help others out in the future!

Trip main events: Overnight houseboat on backwaters and 3 nights on Bangaram island in Lakshadweep. Honeymoon, so I spent all my money.

Day 1: Arrival
Stayed at the Casino Hotel the first night. As I organized the trip to Bangaram and the Casino Hotel reservations through Anthony Viju (recommended by CliveG), one of the managers of CHG, the group that owns both properties, we were met at the airport by a driver with a sign board to take us to the hotel.

The Casino Hotel is alright. It's clean, and you can walk to a ferry to get to Fort Cochin and Mattancherry which is nice. Around the hotel itself though is just a dusty street and lots of traffic. The hotel food is very good.　While we were there the power happened to go out in the morning causing a bit of a commotion, but I'm sure that was totally random.

Day 2: Houseboat
Caught a train at around 9am heading from Chennai down to Alleppy in order to catch the houseboat. The express train cost 52 rupees for two of us. Planned to wake up earlier but couldn't do it physically. Heh.

After we got to Alleppy we grabbed a tuk-tuk to take us down the boat jetty. The driver seemed to know a lot about the houseboats... Maybe too much... And he recommended that instead of randomly going down to pick a boat, it would be better if we allowed him to take us to the "government office" to get a receipt for a certain boat with a fixed price, that we would then take down to the boat, have a look, and then if we liked what we saw we could pay the amount shown on the receipt at the boat. When we got to the "office" which seemed to be at the bottom of a hotel of some sort...

The guy asked us what kind of boat we wanted. We said one with A/C, a fan, and meals, and we wanted to stay over for 1 night. He said OK, made some calls, and pulled out a book with pictures of one particualr boat. I tlooked fine so we said OK. He then gave us a receipt saying it would coast 6500 Rs. We were advised on this forum that 5000-6000 is a reasonable rate for a overnight houseboat, so we figured that 6500 couldn't be too bad. We took it. The tuk-tuk took us down to the jetty and we checked the boat out. It was in fact a good one. Our boats name was Sarah.

The houseboat left at 11:30 am and we headed out to the large 62 km lake in the area. We went through the lake and proceeded down more narrow backwaters. There are many other houseboats in the area, many which launched at the same time we did. It's fun waving at other tourists as they drift down the waters, and taking pictures of their boats as they glide by is great, but it's a little disappointing that you're not totally alone. However, as the day progresses the boats get more spread out and there is plenty of "alone time".

We had a lunch break at around 1 pm in which the boat was stopped and food served, and again stopped for dinnner at 7:30. We took a walk around the villiage area that we stopped in. There happened to be a festival going on at a church that we got to peep at. Lots of kids asked us for pens, money, or to take a photo of them.

It turned out that the light in our bathroom was on the fritz. It would go on and off at random times. The crew tried to fix it, but weren't able to totally fix the problem. No big deal though. There was also no hot water in the shower, but again, doesn't matter, it was hot outside anyway.

The food on the boat was unbeliveable. So good. I cannot begin to describe. Oh the fish!!! Magnificent. I honestly think the food we had there was better than the food at the Taj Malabar. The cook used to be a hotel manager apparently. After dinner we "happened" to pass buy a guy selling gigantic lobster sized river prawns on his little row boat. He held them up to our houseboat and wanted to sell them to us. I'm not a fan of prawn, so we declined. Later we heard from other tourists that they were offered the same prawns from the same guy, bought one, and really enjoyed it. So even though it's a convenient setup to get you to buy prawns, they're apparently very very good.

Day 3:

We woke up on the houseboat to a rainy day. It rained a lot overnight, and in the morning was drizzling. We watch the locals walk by on the shore as we had our breakfast on the boat. We headed out at about 8am and got back to shore at about 9am. We then took a tuk-tuk to the train station and paid 24 rupees to get back to Ernakulam on a local train. We made friends with some English students on the way back.

We headed back to the Casino Hotel, freshened up, and headed out to the Fort Cochin area. We took the ferry from Willington Island there for 2-3 Rs. We had lunch at the fancy Malabar Junction on Parade Ground Rd, and then went to Tea Shop on Peter Celia St for some killer tea and chocolate cake (called Death by Chocolate, it's great).

On the way back to the ferry we noticed a commotion around the fishing nets in Fort Cochin, and were lucky to see the catch of the day being auctioned off. Lots of squid!

Then we went back to the hotel and called it a night.

Disaster! At the hotel I caught up with ANTONY VIJU the Reservation Manager for Bangaram and realized I hadn't booked teh Cochin-Agatti flight yet!!! I totally (mistakenly) thought that he was taking care of that one. He arranged our reservations on Bangaram, our permits to get on the island, the transportation from Agatti to Bangaram, and even the hotel rooms at the Casino hotel... But the flight from Cohin to Agatti was my responsibility and I blew it. Antony stayed calm, and told me he would try to do something in the morning as I had arrived after all his travel agents were closed for the day. He was confident that in the morning they would be a cancalization of some sort and we would be able to get on the flight to Agatti.

Day 4: Near miss

I turns out Antony was right, and we were able to get our flight to Agatti! We were also able to get the return flight. Brilliant.

Begin 3 nights on Bangaram.

The boat ride to Bangaram from Agatti is long. They say it is an hour, but it took us an hour and a half. The sea was very rough. So rough that a few of the passengers on our boat got out the life vests and held on for dear life. We made it in one piece though! It's usually not that bad.

Bangaram was great. I have never seen such a beautiful island. It's realy picture-esque. Never seen so many shades of blue... You can walk around the entire island in about an hour or so, and during low tide you can actually walk way out in knee-deep or so water to some sand dunes. It's beautiful. All around is water, it kind of gives the feeling of standing in some kind of shimmering void. It's really weird.

Most of the tourists are middle aged or retired Europeans. We did see the odd young couple, but not many. It's easy to know who is on the island because everyone has dinner together under the stars on the beach at a fabulous buffet style dinner ever night.

The food is excellent. Breakfast lunch and dinner can be eaten on the beach. They have a lodge-ish place where you can eat indoors if the bugs bother you, or if it is raining.

Activities on the island include oil massages, diving, snorkeling, a glass bottom boat you can take out on the reefs, beach volleyball is available (though I didn't see anyone playing), you can get a ride out to one of the smaller completely desert islands and get picked up later. There are hammocks in front of every hut, and an activity center where you can borrow books to read. Most of the activities are charged. If you are there on a night with a full moon (which I wasn't) you can watch sea turtles coming to shore to lay their eggs.

The huts are nice. There is no hot water, but that doesn't matter much because it will likely be hot while you're there anyway. Mosquitoes are around, but the staff will burn mosquito coils in front of your room every night for you. I also brought mosquito repellent, I assume it probably helped out during dinner outside, and when I was sitting on the hammock slacking like I have never slacked before.

On the way out of Bangaram we ran into some trouble. The waves around Agatti were so strong our boat could not cross. Apparently it's the first time it ever happened. We were stuck offshore in the boat for 4 hours. We missed our flight time. However, because we were the only ones on the flight (tiny cessna) the plane waited for us. It was a Indian Airlines day. We eventually had to all transfer into a smaller motorboat and make for shore over the reef on very shallow water. The larger boat cannot land at that location because it would bottom out. The boat transfer was quite the adventure. I'm sure similar trouble will not happen again for a long time.

Last Day:

On the last day we did our shopping. We went out on M.G. Road in Ernakulam, and bought snacks at a famous bakery there called... (need to look up name, I think ti was John's Bakery?). We also went back to Mattancherry and picked up some spices for people.

Great trip! I'll revisit this post every so often to clean up the language and double check my facts.

If anyone has questions or noticed anything I missed please post and I'll go back and edit the original topic!

Thanks for all who helped me organize this trip!

__________________
http://www.japannewbie.com

Nick-H

Sounds like a wonderful trip, utterly memorable, even if it hadn't been your honeymoon.

I would have enjoyed your water-born adventures --- but I can appreciate that many might not.

For those on a high budget trip to Kerala, I can add my recommendation of CGHearth group too (as I think I have done on a recent thread). They really do have a winning formula in hotel management and hospitality.

But, so far as India travel goes, this is top-budget stuff.

Still, a treat is in order from time to time

__________________
.


Just one member of the IndiaMike Mod Team

CliveG

Hi Saikyo,
Delighted for you that you had a great trip. The boat rides sound interesting - we experienced similar conditions this year to the point that I though we were on the verge of taking on water and sinking - but hey no pain no gain.
Glad you will have great memories to look back on.

Clive

smartindore

Hello Friend,

Seems you had a great time with this trip..

Can you give me a idea, about how much money you spended in this all.. including everything ( inside india).

Thanks..

shahronakm

Saikyo, Thanks for the trip report.
Did you go for diving ? How was the experience.

Ronak.

saikyo

Okay, I have dived before in Saipan, did it once. Got my C license. But it kinda freaks me out so I didn't go this time.

My wife went diving this time. I was snorkeling in the area they were diving at... with the wife of a French guy who was also of the same preference as me ;-)

Anyway. My wife says the diving was the best she has ever done (only her second time though, so she's comparing to Saipan). She saw sing rays, turtles, and countless species of fish.

The diving staff there are very professional. The head divers have tons of experience, are great at helping the newcommers along, and speak excellent English. It was my wifes first time doing a back roll entry from the boat, and she was a little scared, but the guys did a great job helping her and she managed fine.

We had our C licenses before we went, so my wife was required to do a quick 30 minute diving primer just off the beach to refresh her memory of how to clear the mask, how to retrieve the mouth piece if it gets lost, stuff like that. This is also so the instructors can see how comfortable you are.

Regarding the quality of the dive. We were on the same boat as a French couple as I mentioned. The husband has been going diving every weekend for the past 10 years. He owns a diving boat in France, and has a little business. He has also been diving in the Maldives. He said that Bangaram was better. He throughly enjoyed himself... So I imagine the diving must have been awesome.

I think that's all for the diving report!

saikyo

Will get to this soon... sorry for the slow response!

Here is what I have at hand. This is for 2 people.

Round Flight from Osaka to Kochin: 254540 yen
Round Flight from Cochin to Agatti: 167.87 USD
Round Boat from Agatti to Bangaram: 68 USD
2 nights at Hotel Casino: 240 USD
1 night at Taj Malabar: ~400 USD
3 nights on Bangaram: 1290 USD (430 a night)
Backwater tour: 6500 Rs

More later...

saikyo

Wow CliveG! I probably would have demanded that they let me start working on the island... I would be too scared to leave.

vandy

That must have been a Pretty Good Room at Taj Malabar for 400 US$ for 1 night.
Did this include Breakfast,Lunch & Dinner.

Rgds

vandy

saikyo

It was in fact one of their suites, not the top end, but it was up there.

It was a fittingly posh last night of a honeymoon... before the grueling plane flights back home!

Seriously though, the Taj isn't all that exciting. If we go again we both said we would rather do a homestay in Fort Cochin!

CliveG

Hi Saikyo,
Looking at your costs I was amazed to see the cost of the flight from Cochin to Agatti was $167.87. I assume this was with Indian Airlines as you mentioned a tiny Cessna (in fact it is a Dornier). The last price I saw for this trip was $338 per person. Kingfisher offer the trip at £563 per person (how they can justify this I do not know!)
Can you confirm the cost of the flight as this seems unbelievably cheap.

ashokm

Saikyo,

Thanks a million for this post and costs etc. I am considering Bangaram for a quick honeymoon (namesake really) trip after getting married in Kerala in Aug 2008.

The prices are pretty steep, but I am keen on trying out diving while I am there. I was hoping to get PADI certification, but the one of the websites mentions various CMAS certifications, and minimum 4 days for CMAS1 and of course its a bit expensive too. Do you know if they do PADI there? And I wonder if I could do it in say, 3 days?

thanks again,
Ashok.

CliveG

Hi Ashok,
Are you planning to go in August? This might be a bit difficult as it is the monsoon season and I am not sure diving will be possible then -you would need to check with Lacadives who run the diving centre. Also getting to Bangaram at that time of year can be difficult due to the weather conditions. Bangaram only offers CMAS which is equivalent to PADI. Whether you can do it in 3 days is a question you would have to ask Lacadives. It is an intensive course with theory and practical and fitting it in to a 3 day trip might depend on how many other people are there and also how you get on with the course. You could consider going to Kadmat which is primarily for divers and has less visitors. The accommodation is much cheaper than Bangaram but the facilities (e.g. food/ no alcohol) are not as good. alternatively you could do a resort course on Bangaram which while it will not give you a qualification it will get you started in that you spend more time on the practical side of diving by beginning your dives in the lagoon and ending with an open water dive(s) on the reef.

ashokm

Clive,

Thanks a million!

Yeah, since that post, I have been googling and figured out the sea could be pretty rough at end of August / early September,and they are quoting Helicopter prices instead of the usual boat between Agatti and Bangaram. I guess boat service resumes Sep 14th onwards? I grew up in Kerala myself, and I thought August was relatively dry with a rain or two now and then. But I grew up fairly inland, so things might be different out in the ocean I suppose? Is it usually really bad last week of August - first week of Sep?

I will contact Lacadives and ask them what they suggest I do. Thanks again, that was very helpful!

regards,
Ashok.

CliveG

Certainly the sea can be rough - even Saikyo and I experienced rough sea conditions and that was in December/January! While it might not prevent diving if you get out there it can be a bit hairy getting back on to the dive boat! It could also affect visability in the lagoon as the coral sand is very fine and it would be like diving in a thick fog. Talk to Lacadives- ask for Rajesh - he is very good and will give you sound advice.