The monsoon doesn't arrive in Kerala so much as move in. It rains the way other places have weather — constantly, theatrically, with a sound on the roof that became, after a few days, the most comforting noise we'd heard in months. Everyone told us not to come now. We came now. We'd do it again.

The backwaters in the rain are a different thing entirely: green gone almost violent, the water dimpled and silver, fishermen sliding past in the mist like they're being developed onto the landscape in real time. We rented a small houseboat for two slow nights, watched it all from under a tin awning, and did almost nothing, which was the point.

Then Tomas got properly sick. Fever, the kind that empties you out, two days in a rented room in Alappuzha listening to the rain and feeling very far from any doctor we knew. It passed — a clinic, some rehydration salts, a kind pharmacist who refused to let Amara overpay — but it scared us. On the road, illness isn't just unpleasant; it's logistical. Who watches Ines, where's the nearest care, do we cancel the boat.

We slowed down even further after that. Cancelled the next two moves. Sometimes the trip tells you the pace and you just listen.

Heading toward the hills and the tea country once everyone's fully upright again.

— Tomas, Amara & Ines