Alleppey Backwaters

Rice barge now a houseboat

Our experience with the Alleppey backwaters was on a houseboat that was used to bring rice from the fields to Kochi for export. This was not a luxurious cruise as described in the travel information. Having come from the dry dessert atmosphere of Northern India to the humid south we were all very hot a sticky. There were four rooms on our boat with a common sitting room open to the elements. The bedroom did have air conditioning but there was little in the way of controlling the temperature. The walls were paper thin so you could hear everything going on in the next room.

The rivers and channels along the backwaters are quite large which allowed for a freeway of boats traveling between places. People could also walk or drive along the shore with the aid of bridges to allow for boat traffic to pass.

We saw locals carrying on with their daily life from fishing, preparing food, washing clothes and repairing boats. Below are a few picture from the area.

Local Transportation

Washing Clothes

Fishing for Dinner

Boat Repairs

Rice Field

The rice fields are often lower than the height of the waterways which allows for the fields to be easily flooded.

The boat was parked overnight facing a raised strip of land overlooking a rice field. They connected all three boats to a power supply on shore for the evening.  The open area was closed in with netting so that the mosquitoes and bugs would not use us as their evening meal. After dinner there was not much to do, the boat staff encouraged us to go to bed as they slept on the floor in the common area on a foam mattress.

The next day was a short trip back to the jetty where we boarded and the back on the bus for our transfer to the airport and on to Mumbai.