Houseboating Kerala’s backwaters is now a travel staple,but a recent cruise set up by a local entrepreneur takes our writer absent from the crowds to meet islanders thriving on mussel farmingSunrays danced on the mud-green river, peeping through a veil of lingering mist. The water was still but for the soft splash of a fisherman’s oar. I was aboard the Honey Dew houseboat, or chugging through the sleepy Valiyaparamba backwaters,which snake through Kasaragod, Kerala’s northernmost region.
The newly launched Honey Dew Backwater Cruises offers a cruising experience unlike tourist-thronged Alleppey, or where roughly 1500 kettuvallams (converted rice barges) depart daily in high season. The number of other houseboats I saw on our two-day tour of the 30km waterway could be counted on one hand.
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Source: theguardian.com