Houseboats in Kerala

The houseboats of Kerala are unique to this area of India and were the historic method for transporting rice and other trade through the aqueous centre of Kerala to the ports on the coast at Kollam, Aleppey and Cochin. In the last the twenty years, the boats have been converted to take visitors through the small canals and villages that still inhabit this road-less and car-less world. From your daybed in the bows of the boat you can watch the traditional life of backwater Kerala continue much as it has done for centuries: women washing from the ghats before their houses, farmers shepherding thousands of ducks, paddy fields being flooded and washed or the night fishermen fishing by their lights.