Alleppey Backwater Tour Packages

The 900 kilometres of interlocking canals, rivers and lagoons that form the Kerala backwaters were engineered as trade arteries in the 14th century, linking inland rice-growing villages to the Malabar Coast. Alleppey — officially Alappuzha — became the hub of this network when Diwan Raja Kesavadas dredged the Vembanad Lake perimeter in 1762, creating a port that rivalled Cochin for coir, copra and spice exports. The Dutch and Portuguese maintained wharves here until the early 20th century. Today the cargo has shifted from pepper sacks to tourists, but the infrastructure remains unchanged: narrow canals barely wider than a kettuvallam houseboat, bamboo-pole depth markers every hundred metres, and Chinese fishing nets draped across channels at dawn. Alleppey backwater tour packages operate from the boat jetty near the KSRTC bus station, where operators lease traditional rice barges retrofitted with teak cabins and open-air decks. The houseboats — originally used to transport grain from Kuttanad's below-sea-level paddy fields — now carry between two and twelve passengers on routes threading through Punnamada Lake, Pamba River tributaries and the narrow canals of Pathiramanal Island. Shikara boats, smaller and oared rather than motor-driven, navigate tighter channels inaccessible to houseboats, passing toddy shops built on stilts, coir-spinning cooperatives and St. Mary's Forane Church, a 427-year-old whitewashed structure visible from the water. The village eco-cruise route includes stops at prawn farms where workers demonstrate Chinese dip-net techniques and at tile-roofed homes where women weave palm-frond baskets. Vembanad Lake, India's longest at 96 kilometres, forms the western boundary of the backwater system. Its depth averages three metres during monsoon, dropping to one metre by March. Migratory Siberian storks arrive in November and depart in February. The Nehru Trophy Snake Boat Race, held annually on the second Saturday of August since 1952, fills the Punnamada segment with 100-foot-long chundan vallams rowed by 100-man teams. Outside race season the lake remains a working waterway: country boats ferry schoolchildren, tankers carry drinking water to islands without wells, and dredgers maintain navigable channels cleared of water hyacinth every monsoon.