Backwater Tour

The Thing To Do, in Kerala, apparently, is tour the backwaters. So I booked a Lonely-Planet-recommended tour from Cochin. We went on a houseboat up the river estuary, and watched the men collecting freshwater mussels - some with long rake-nets, others by hopping into the water, gathering the shells with their feet, then ducking under to fill their nets. The meat is very high in calcium, as our guide told us about 47 times. A couple of us brave culinary adventurers tried some, fried up in a curry with tomato, onion and coconut meat - they weren't bad. The shells are fired and reduced to powder, which is shipped out to pharmaceutical companies in the north and used in calcium tablets. Or turned into whitewash. Or fertilizer. Who knew there were so many uses for freshwater mussels?