A trip to God's Own Country-Part 3

We had a two night stay at Thekkady. We spent the first night in a forest guest house named 'The Tiger Trail Guest House' and the second one in a hut in a resort called 'The Bamboo Grove', developed and managed by eco-tourism department. The huts in this resort were nothing like any we had seen before, They were made of bamboo mats and all the furniture too inside them- the beds, chairs, table, cupboard etc. was made with bamboos. The surrounding area was very green and beautiful. There was a tree house on one of the trees in the garden.
We undertook a tribal village walking tour with a well informed guide in the afternoon. He told us about the tribes in that area, their customs and also about all the work that is being done there to preserve their habitat and culture by department of ecology and UN agencies.
We had planned to watch a Kalarippayat performance in the evening. It is an ancient martial art form, still taught throughout Kerala. Some believe that it is a fore-runner of all martial arts as its roots can be traced back to the twelfth century. Its movements are graceful and disciplined. However, a terrible tragedy took place in Thekkady that day at about 5 pm. Our distressed attendant informed us at tea time that as the last set of boats were cruising in the lake, one of them, owned by the Kerala State Tourist Dept, had overturned and capsized. There had been about 80 tourists on board. We turned on a Malayalam channel on television to get the news. The initial reports suggested that all the tourists had moved to one side on spotting some animals at the lake shore and that disbalanced the boat. Only 14 persons, most of whom were on the upper deck and knew how to swim, had swum to the shore and survived, rest all were trapped inside the submerged boat and perished. We stared at the tv screen, shell-shocked. We were there too, in one of the boats, precisely 24 hours ago, and on our boat too people were running to one side on spotting animals- some using binoculars to view the animals while others were photographing them with cameras and videocams. Nobody had told us that it could be dangerous. No one had given us life jackets or any security instructions. The visuals that were shown after a while were heart-breaking. Among the dead, there were children, women and young people. The relatives and friends stood and watched in shocked disbelief. The whole town of Thekkady was submerged in sorrow. Everything closed down as people mourned the victims.
Later on a different picture came out on the cause of the tragedy. Some survivors( the boat driver and conductor were among them) said that the boat was tilting even from the start of the cruise. In normal course the boats should remain stable even if all passengers go to one side. It was this tilt caused by some mechanical fault combined with the movement of the passengers which resulted in the mishap. The driver said that he had informed the authorities about this tilt but no notice was taken of it. Moreover, there were life jackets in the boat but they were not given to the tourists so they ended up of no use to anybody. Kerala government has ordered an inquiry into the incident. I hope all the people who were responsible for maintainance of the motorboats and for training the staff for security measures are brought to book.
With heavy hearts at the unnecessary loss of so many lives, we left Thekkady next morning.