Part 3: Alleppey -canal villages and wharf

• Sapir wrote: In the evening of Monday, the 18th of Tammuz, we again got down into shallow fishing barges on the canals, and we steered and went as we had steered from Cochin to here,

four days and four nights. This journey too was for us repose and delight . . .

“ For the canals are not wide and on their banks, on this side and that, was a land fruitful and verdant, with every plant and every herb and every good fragrance, like a garden of the Lord, full of delight, with a great many coconut, banana, and betel trees, and high, broad trees in the shade of whose vines dwelt the keepers of the gardens and orchards,

And many people sit in huts among the gardens and the orchards, they and all their possessions.”

Our eight-hour boat ride to Hindu villages along the smaller canals (Oct. 5)

Our guide, Shamji, his cousin, Ranjiv

About alcoholic beverages made from parts of the coconut tree, Sapir wrote:

“From it they produce a distilled liquor ([author’s text] aquavita), which is very strong and sweet, wholesome for the stomach and heart, and they likewise make other kinds of drinks from it. The fermented drink also made from it is strong and very hot.”

“They also produce from the wool of the tree a good beverage similar to barley beer, which is white and thin, and they drink it to open the heart and to quench the thirst.”

Sapir probably refers to what is today called “toddy” (fermented from coconut bud sap) and “arrack” (distilled from toddy).

Toddy house (men only)

Sapir wrote about “high, broad trees in the shade of whose vines (daliyot: vines, trailing branches) dwelt the keepers of the gardens and orchards”

These trees were probably Banyan trees, with their aerial roots, found throughout south Asia.

Sapir: “In the morning of Erev Shabbat, Parshat Balaq, we came to the harbor of Alleppey. … The city is on the shore of the sea and is very large in measure, and most of its inhabitants are Muslims, and also Hindus from all the families of this land. And there is a great commerce in the products of that landto all the countries.”

Abandoned warehouses near the wharf

Ruined wharf

Waiting for the train to Trivandrum