The second Eid holiday saw an opportunity to go across to Trivandrum (or Thiruvanathapuram if you can get your tongue around that), southern India and travel up to Kumarakom and into the tea country of Munnar before heading back down to the coast at Kochin to fly back to Abu Dhabi.
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| A crowded street in Trivandrum |
Part 1: Fishing Kerala style.
Flying into Trivandrum and its rather antiquated airport early in the morning we were fortunately greeted by our pick up driver to take us the short distance down the coast to Kovalam where we checked into a rather nice resort at 5.00 am!
After a few hours sleep it was time to explore and head off down to the beach.
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| The view from the balcony. |
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| Kerala beach with net hauling in progress. |
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Loading the net before heading off about 300 metres from shore
and 300m along. |
The actual fishing operation is relatively simple. 6 paddlers and several others head off out to sea paying out the rope at one end of the net. After the net has been floated off the boat heads back to shore a few hundred metres from where it started. Both ropes are then slowly hauled in and the net and catch taken up onto the beach as the following photos show.
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| Taking the strain |
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| Wonder how much they have caught? |
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| Crows waiting for a free feed. |
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A coordinated approach to use the waves to get the catch ashore.
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| Removing fish caught up before the net is set again. |
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| Sorting the catch. |
The job of the women is to sort the fish and fill the containers and take the fish away. They also leave piles of fish out in the sand to dry as well.
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| The end of a 100% manual fishing process. Total people power involved! Sunday is a day of rest. |
After a few days on the beach it was time to head up to Kumarakom, see part 2. Not far but a 4 hour drive along crowded pot holed roads.
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