Dawn is breaking, soft and blue. The river and I are just rousing from sleep. Gazing out the window, a placid bed of water gently ripples beneath me as a bird dips down in search of breakfast. 

I have spent the night on a houseboat in the famous Kerala backwaters. Here, a web of about 500 miles of lagoons weave between barrier islands inland from the Arabian sea on the western side of southern India.