Overnight on a Private Houseboat

One of the highlights of the vacation through Kerala was a night we spent journeying from Kumarakom to Alleppey on our very own houseboat. These houseboats are designed like the Keralan rice barges on steroids - they come with anywhere from one double room to more or less a floating palace of 8-10 rooms. They have anywhere from basic facilities to satellite television.

I'd like to say that houseboat experience is a unique one, but with over 500 houseboats operating out of Alleppey and another 200 from Kumarakom (and all 700 go back and forth between the two), they are by FAR the most common transport form on the famed backwaters of Kerala. In fact, they're so common, that they are often seen pulling along the local hollowed-out-trunk canoes as a sort of free waterway taxi service.

Just lazing around the backwaters for the afternoon and docking to watch the sunset over the palm-fringed banks was a very relaxing way to start slowing down after a fairly fast-paced tour of Kerala. Besides the fact that our houseboat actually had an upper-deck (a neat little place to sit with a bit of privacy, there wasn't much else to write home about. I would write more here if there were more to say, but frankly, Mary and I really just enjoyed doing nothing - we played Ziggity (an amazing card game, let me tell you), and Phase 10 (another good card game), read our books, ate, and just had a good time doing nothing.