I slept that night with the blinds up – with the idea that in the morning it would be beautiful to see the glow of dawn undo the night and spread out over the rooftops and the jade canopy of palm trees. After breakfast (flaky paratha with egg, fragrant fish curries, delicious, abundant fruit, chai) we were taking a boat trip on the backwaters. The car journey was about forty minutes. Eventually we came off the main road and onto a track fringed with dense, luridly green trees and dotted with the odd house (gorgeous verandas, abundant gardens, paradise). Sudden, blanket peace. On foot, we crossed a bridge over still blue water to a jetty staffed by a couple of men and with a string of hand-painted boats docked. What followed was utter tranquillity. The morning was pearl-grained; dusty, iridescent light, the silver-cast water perfectly calm. We floated along and the silence was broken only by our voices, by the plunge of the bamboo oar, the occasional rumble of a train over the distant railway bridge, and by the birds – a kingfisher, hooded crows, more of the raptors ubiquitous at dusk in Kozhikode... It was a landscape familiar only from celluloid and yet here I was, living it. All the colours and the light – the pleasant breeze cutting through the hot, heavy air... Later, I looked at some of the photographs we’d taken and it was bizarre to see our sun-deprived, wintry flesh in all of that radiant sun. At the end of the trip, we went into the mangroves – cool, tenebrous – high walls of mangled roots, squatted by spindly, oil-black crabs. Then out again, into the flat, shimmering light, almost lilac above the water. Buzzards overhead, wings beating. 

Francesca Reece, 2026