Allepey beach

Allepey is a busy little town where people stop off to visit Kerala's backwaters. It is criss-crossed with dark green canals - backwaters in town. The beach is actually 2km from the centre, so I jumped on a bike and navigated there by stopping every two minutes and asking someone the way. It's a strolling, kite-flying (see photograph), running-around kind of beach, with a fabulously crumbling, very English pier and one of the many branches of the Government-run Indian Coffee House. Just behind the front was a large dusty cricket pitch with at least a dozen games going on.
Before sunset, hundreds of well-dressed families arrived (it was Sunday), and the peaceful babble of sleepy afternoon chat turned into a lively buzz. Malayalam is the language in Kerala (Hindi is India's national language, but each state has its own language). It's soft and lyrical, with similar inflections to Swedish and Welsh. I was telling my travel companion later how to spell Hannah, and said it's the same backward as forward. And he said, just like Malayalam...