When I heard that my houseboat came complete with guide, my heart sank. I had come to the watery backwaters of Alleppey in Kerala to escape the hard-sell hassle of touristy India. A week on popular Kovalam beach had been marred by the constant entreaties to buy something.
A couple of days on a kettuvallom (rice barge) houseboat would, I thought, be a blissful break from all that. Drifting around a corner of this green network of waterways, like a Cleopatra in my own vessel, I would be able to appreciate the lushness of rural Kerala from the privacy of wooden bows.
So I greeted my young guide, Santosh, in a prickly frame of mind, shifting my wicker chair to the opposite side of the small deck and picking up my binoculars as we chugged out of Alleppey harbor. After half an hour, when we had left behind other water traffic, he quietly pointed out a stork-billed kingfisher. I had been so intent on looking the other way that I hadn’t seen it. Brilliant turquoise, with a fat, amber beak and crested head, it flew low, light as a dragonfly, across the water. Seeing my delight, Santosh began, gently, to point out more.
I began to relax and look around me. At our bows was Basheer, the poler, heaving us along with an unwieldy bamboo pole, round his waist a shocking pink lungi doubled up like a miniskirt, a male-only fashion dictated by the tropical heat. In the galley behind was Reji the cook, sending enticing smells our way. I had imagined I would get a cold onion bhaji and a banana if I was lucky. I was wrong. Behind him was Butru the engine man, who would rev up the tiny motor only if we had a big lake to cross. Many kettuvalloms seem intent on a sightseeing marathon, roaring along at great speed. But as Santosh rightly said, this is to miss the point.
Traveling at this gentle pace, making barely a noise, you see so much. We passed many intimate scenes played out in front gardens: Clothes-washing, morning ablutions, coir-rope spinning from coconut husks. Sometimes I felt we were intruding on private moments. Currently, there are few enough house boats for the locals not to mind, but things could change. One recent tourist had insisted on disembarking for a walk in her bikini, which caused an angry riot on the banks. The community warned that if this happened again, no boats could use their canal.
Kerala is, in many ways, an intensely conservative place. We were floating through the exact setting for Arundhati Roy’s Booker-prize-winning novel, where there was much outrage at the poignant story of an inter-caste extramarital affair. But Kerala’s seeming innocence is also its great charm. We passed agricultural scenes from another age: Canoes with modest cargoes of mussels gathered by hand that morning, men balanced precariously. A floating barter system went from house to house, exchanging metal kitchen vessels for eggs. Then there was an original kettuvallom, its thatched bamboo and coir roof a mere sunshade compared to our floating palace.
The houseboats are around 70 years old. They evolved in this shape for the comfort of fishermen, out all day in the punishing sun, but have now been creatively remodeled for the tourist trade. From a distance, they look like chrysalises: Rounded and organic. All were different. Some seemed enormous, with gable windows, penthouse roofs and tiered shades fore and aft.
It was hard to know what ours looked like until, anchoring for lunch in one of the great lakes that dot the 500 miles of waterways, I dived off into fresh water. I wished I could have taken a photograph from my vantage point — the houseboat looked enchanting.
After an impressive seven-course lunch, eaten on my own as the staff delicately withdrew, I had energy only to loll on the bow’s plump mattress watching early evening rituals. Heading home from school came groups of children. They would wave, shyly, before running off. Kerala is justly proud of its education system, boasting the highest literacy rate in India — around 95 percent.
We stopped and looked in on a madly gaudy Christian church, painted turquoise and apricot with fancy chandeliers. Then there were the Gulf houses, which stood out from their neighbors with their crazy paving and wrought iron gates. Built with money earned in the Gulf — for many Keralites the only chance of making a good living — there were no husbands or fathers in evidence. The men come home once every two or three years, and just for a couple of months.
Each canal we turned into brought changing scenes, though the area we were exploring was small. Mindful of stories of boats parked in a line next to a thundering main road, while the staff fraternized merrily, I had insisted on spending the night somewhere quiet. Santosh had taken my instructions to heart. We were heading to his favorite, secret place, up a wide canal flanked by vivid ribbons of green rice-paddy fields, ahead of us a perfect row of coconut palms.
Anchor was dropped in the center of a still lake. In the dusk, fishing canoes headed out from villages to spend the night wobbling on the waters, lit by lanterns. It was an enchanting sight: Tiny lights on the horizon and, above, a brilliant pattern of stars. While dinner was being prepared, I floated in warm, silky water, thinking I must have surely died and gone to heaven. The sarong-hawkers of Kovalam beach now seemed an improbable figment of my imagination.
I woke early, to silence. Sunlight sent stippled patterns through the rattan walls on to my mosquito net. As melodic temple music wafted across the waters, I couldn’t resist diving in before breakfast.
I now felt quite at home on the boat; settled in the day’s gentle routines. So it was a shock, as the day wore on, to realize that we were heading back to civilization, along the more well-worn routes of the day-tripping kettuvalloms. We passed two traveling in tandem, elegant Indians lounging in the bows.
“North Indians,” said Santosh. “They are starting to come to Kerala as tourists. They are not popular with the guides.” Notoriously exacting, these newly rich yuppies demand non-Keralite food, more comfortable seating — even, incredibly, air conditioning.
Few people rent houseboats for more than one night. This is a shame, because once you have slowed down, you do not want to rev up again. Leaving my small kingdom, I felt intense regret, and looked back on it with great nostalgia for the rest of my trip. Two or three nights, I felt, would have given me a real feel for Kerala’s backwaters. With more time, Santosh likes to stop the boat and go for a walk, visiting villages and meeting families, or indulge birdwatchers.
Our food was of a higher, fresher standard than many hotel kitchens, and with a guide like mine, you have a captive source of erudite information, as well as delightful company.
But perhaps you would be so relaxed, that the shock of the hustle-bustle awaiting you on the shore would be too much to take. Personally, though, I would be prepared to take the risk.
- 11 September 2003
