A relaxing backwaters tour on — surprise — a floating hotel

KERALA, India — An overnight trip on a houseboat through the canals, lakes and lagoons that form the inland backwaters of Central Kerala is the highlight of a visit to India's tropical south.

Each boat comes staffed with a captain, an assistant and a cook, and from noon one day to after breakfast the next, you've got their full attention.

A cool drink of coconut juice or a beer? By your side in an instant. Lunch, dinner, tea, snacks ... your cook knows his way around a galley.

The houseboats are reworked kettuvallams — rice and spice barges once used to transport harvests from the backwater islands to the mainland.

Backwater cruises

Houseboats

Any hotel, home stay or travel agency can book backwater cruises. The quality and size of the houseboats vary, so it's best to wait until you arrive in Kerala, or work through someone you know.

Look for a boat with an inboard diesel engine (less noise) and sanitary tanks for disposal of waste. Rates start around $100 for two with all meals. Some have AC. I paid $130 for our two-bedroom houseboat booked by our home stay host through Evergreen Houseboats and Cruises.

Lodging

Most people pick up their boats in Alleppey, about an hour's drive from Kochi in Central Kerala. We spent the night before at Emerald Isle, a 150-year-old villa and home stay on the backwaters island of Chathurthyakary, seven miles from Alleppey, where the owner's cousins operate a fleet of houseboats that pick up passengers outside the door.

Rates at Emerald Isle are $88-$106 for two, including all meals, and pick-up service by canoe from a dock a few miles from Alleppey. There are four large rooms with private bathrooms and indoor and outdoor showers. Two rooms have AC. See www.emeraldislekerala.com or call 011-91-477-2703899.

Today, about 400 houseboats, mostly new ones, travel the waterways around a town called Alleppey about an hour's drive from Kochi in Central Kerala.

I'm not sure what I pictured — maybe a wooden boat outfitted with few chairs and a mosquito net for sleeping — but it certainly wasn't the 90-foot-long floating hotel that pulled up outside the Emerald Isle home stay in an island village where we spent the night.

It was a sturdy boat built from bamboo, coconut wood and coconut palms, with floors of polished teak. The bedrooms — two of them — looked like staterooms on a cruise ship, each furnished with twin beds, a Western-style bathroom with a shower and holding tank for running water; a desk, wardrobe and wooden ceiling fan.

At the front of the boat was a dining table and wicker deck chairs. Aft was the galley, the domain of our cook, Sabastian, 39. He handed my husband and me two chilled coconuts with straws, and introduced the other two crew members with whom we'd be spending the next 21 hours — Saneesh, 36, the captain, and Biju, 38, the engine man.

While Sabastian fixed lunch, Saneesh popped opened an umbrella to shield himself from the sun, and took the helm.

Gliding through a palm-fringed lagoon, past stucco houses and men paddling wooden canoes, we listened to the thwacking sounds of women doing the laundry by beating clothes on the rocks and heard music coming from Hindu temples on shore.

Our home stay hosts had treated us to some excellent local food, but nothing so far topped Sabastian's fresh pineapple curry. He served it with fat-grained white rice, colorful side dishes of beet root, potatoes and vegetables and a platter of fresh cucumbers and tomatoes.

It was nearly 3 p.m. by the time we settled into the deck chairs to relax with a second beer, and the wind began to pick up. It had rained the night before, and the crew was expecting more, although not quite this early.

Biju changed from his uniform of long pants into a lungi, the wrap-around skirt that Keralan men wear. Then he relieved Saneesh at the helm. Sabastian joined them on the bow, and they strategized on where to tie up and ride out the storm that was coming.

Biju steered the boat out of the lagoon into open waters and headed into the wind. Ahead was a thin strip of land lined with little brick homes and a big palm tree in the middle.

The rain began coming down in slanted sheets, and the wind whipped through the canvas covering the boat's open sides. We pushed the deck furniture under cover while our crew sailed toward the dike and finally anchored.

Soaking wet, they ducked inside to change clothes and figure out what to do next. But the skies cleared and the storm passed as quickly as it had arrived.

Before long, we were back in the deck chairs, cruising past kids in flip-flops sloshing along the muddy paths. Saneesh docked near shore for the night around 5:30 p.m. He lighted a pot of herbs and incense to keep the mosquitoes away. We ate dinner, drank more beer, talked and went to bed around 8 p.m.

There's not much to do on a houseboat, but that's the point. This was the most relaxing time we had spent in India, and, this being India, it wasn't dull.

Carol Pucci: 206-464-3701 or cpucci@seattletimes.com