Living in Water - Alapuzha

I had been to Alapuzha(Kerala) for 3 days and it has been one of the memorable experiences I have had so far. More than spending time on touring a place I got a different experience on seeing a very different lifestyle of people.

I visited Alapuzha and stayed in a village called Pulimkunnu about 18 kms from Alapuzha town. The resort I stayed was very nice. It is called a village resort,so it had basic features of our Indian villages like Power cuts,lack of telephones. But other than this this is a very good village atmosphere set in. You do not have much options to eat but what ever served was very nice.

The Kerala style of cooking though not much different other than using coconut products was nice to have.

The best part of the trip is the one day stay at the house boat. I have heard of couples staying at house botats in Kumarakom and bachelors partying at house boats at Alapuzha before but what I experienced was a entirely different one. The house boat started from Pulimkunnu and went for about 40 kms on the backwaters full into the villages. I was thrilled to see kilometer boards kept on the water for the destinations .

The life style of people in the villages I could see was entirely different from what I have seen before. Many tourist places these days are crowded and people also change their life style accordingly. There is not much nativity seen in many places . But these villages I saw live in water and spend their life in boat travel.

There are no big trucks,traffic roads and pollution.Most of the villagers user boats for commutation and for crossing the banks cars/two wheelers use the boat . Fish is the staple food here and god has given it in plenty to the people here.

School children commute by boats to schools,Government runs boats like they run metro buses. Though the life of people living close to the banks is a concern during heavy rains ,people does not seem to bother about it.

One of the different way of Irrigation I saw (Though I'm not a strong agriculturist),on either sides of the backwater the paddy fields are flooded with water during rainy days and once the monsoon season is over(June-Sep) the water from these paddy fields are pumped into the backwaters,paddy is cultivated and then harvested by February and then again by June they start filling water. The rain water harvesting is done traditionally here but they do not call it by that technical name

I would say this is one of the must see places . If you are a nature lover and love to read/experience different life styles of people Alapuzha is a nice place to go. If Anthony Bourdain has not visited here before,I would recommend him to do so.