(coming soon)
Kettuvallam
It’s common to hear a kettuvallam called a “rice boat.” In fact, many of those you’ll see in the Kerala backwater are working boats hauling copra and other commodities. The genesis of kettuvallams such as pictured here, so I heard, is that one elder boatman had three daughters reaching marriage age at about the same time and was pressed for cash. The idea came to him that hauling passengers might be more profitable than hauling goods. He suggested the idea to the people at Tourindia’s office in Thiruvananthapuram — the name which replaced the city’s more chewable old one, Trivandrum. They liked it and the backwater cruise was born.
Kettuvallams such as this one are outfitted with a head and berth, as well as side panels that open to make a kind of awning. The experience of drifting lazily along — that is, lazily from the passenger’s point of view since the boatmen are putting a lot of umph into the poling — has to be one of the world’s most enjoyable travel experiences. In the quiet of the placid backwater, as the sky makes its quick tropical transition from blue to copper to red, it’s easy to forget that you’re not far from a launch site for India’s budding space program.
