Kumarakom Backwaters

Kumarakom Backwaters provides the best stage for visitors looking for exclusive experience of Kerala Backwaters. This placid resort village of the Kerala backwaters drags the muse out of even the most poetically challenged. So pack your quill and head for what are arguably the most beautiful acres along the Kuttanad backwaters. And the backwaters come alive with its palm-fringed canals, clumps of coir retting in water, a fishing boat returning with the day’s catch, a boat laden with pots and pans making the rounds to shoppers in waterfront houses.

Make no bones about it, Kumarakom backwaters is a resort destination. This tiny village on the edge of Vembanad Lake was practically unknown till one Henry Baker purchased land from the erstwhile Raja of Travancore to build himself a grand home. When the last of the Bakers left India, Taj Hotels stepped in to turn it into a fancy resort changing the fortunes of the once quiet fishing hamlet. Kumarakom backwaters today is a maze of modern resorts and heritage homes-cum-hotels spilling over the island’s bank.

The road from Kottayam ends at Kumarakom’s jetty, right near Market Junction and the Bay Island Driftwood Museum. The Bird Sanctuary is north of the jetty, where the Meenachil River meets Vembanad Lake.
The Kerala backwater tour has to be experienced slowly, leisurely and languidly. The best way to do it is to hire a kettuvallom, the traditional cargo boat-turned-houseboat. These house boats Kerala range from tiny canoes to houseboats capped by elaborate superstructures of bamboo and rosewood, panelled with mats of screw pine.

KTDC offers motorboat, speedboat and pontoon boat rides. There are scores of private operators too, at the boat jetty. Take the waterways past paddy and coconut groves, along fresh-water canals and rivers that debouch into Vembanad Lake.