One detail I forgot to mention about our expedition to the elephants, which begs to be recorded: as the trainers and elephants left their bathing area, they passed by a shrine to Ganesha, the elephant god of Hinduism. Each elephant, even the youngest, stops before the shrine and bows to the god before proceeding home to the elephant training camp where they live.

This morning, we hired a small motorboat and driver and spent a couple of hours boating around the backwaters. We putted along slowly, and B, K, and I sat on the roof of the boat most of the time, so we had a good view of the area and the goings-on on and along the waterways. We passed by countless small vignettes of life on these waters: a small boy getting soaped up and scrubbed by his dad; women doing their daily washing and drawing water; the one fancy resort on a nearby channel, featuring chefs with high white hats and a huge swimming pool; a boat captain piloting a large houseboat back to its berth, with his son on his lap helping to steer....and so on.

I almost forgot to mention the big news from yesterday: we inadvertently became famous local environmental activists (for a day at least). Here is how it happened: As we walked onto a main street in downtown Alleppey yesterday afternoon, we soon noticed that by ones, twos, and small groups, people were lining up to form a blocks-long line along the main canal that runs through north Alleppey. Many people smiled at us, holding out their hands and making space for us to join them. The purpose of their action wasn't completely clear from the explanations we could get--just that it was about forming as long a human chain as possible for 5 minutes, and there was an obvious spirit of solidarity and good cheer. As the line grew longer and longer, the surrounding streets grew emptier and emptier, and more and more hands reached out to us, I felt increasingly churlish about just walking by. Eventually, I said to B and K: "Everyone in town seems to be in on this: let's join in. What could be the harm in it?" So we did, taking the hands nearest us. Within a few minutes, someone called out to get the attention of a roving photographer, who quickly came over to snap our photo, then continued on down the endless line.

Last night, we'd soon forgotten the incident, but this morning at the breakfast table, our waiter excitedly brought over the morning paper, which is in Malayam (completely unreadable to us; it has its own script). And there we were in the paper, prominently featured in a color photo. We asked our waiter for his understanding of yesterday's event. He explained that it was a demonstration of support for cleaning up the increasingly polluted backwaters. We were relieved to know that we'd been supporting a cause we could fully believe in.