Kerala – God’s own country is not called God’s for no reason. Dotted with coconut trees, situated by the coast, with sultry weather most of the year, balmy air in the evenings, full of tea plantations in shades of Green, with myriad beaches & backwaters, pioneer of Ayurveda treatments, skilled in Kuchipudi & their own martial arts of Kalaripattu, Kerala is truly celestial. How can it be anything but God’s country.

In the winters of 2015, when I was on Kerala tour with my husband, we began with Wayanad & ended on Kovalam with 2 days reserved solely for Allepey. It rained for those two days, and we had stayed near the Allepey beach just opposite to a cute, little Tea place that served various types of Tea, Croissants and Cakes. We went there twice a day – before walking up to the beach & coming back from the beach & the many restaurants by the coast, with my favorite being Dreamer’s restaurant. These long walks, sitting by the beach doing nothing, eating cakes, drinking tea lifted my mood, but my joy knew no bounds when I covered a few more kilometres to discover the calm, crazy and cute backwaters.

Calm because you can hear the rippling sounds.

Crazy because you see all sorts of scenes over there.

And cute because of those little, flying birds over it, against the blue, somewhat clear sky with boats scattered everywhere.

We took the entire shikara to ourselves and booked it for 6 hours. It would glide over the backwaters and go ultra slow – slower than the slow motion video on your phone. You could hear the birds flying, the leaves rustling, the water flowing, the conversations of people in neighbouring shikaras – with no noise.

The person steering the shikara will take you to various, fictitious points like:

1. The Bird’s Point – where you would find a random branch in the middle of nowhere shooting from the backwaters with birds sitting on it.

1. Lover’s Point – just some point where many houseboats and shikaras will be huddled together
2. Some Bollywood points – where some Bollywood movie, once upon a time, was shot – or probably never, but they keep talking about it
3. Best Fish Fry Restaurants – well! these ones are okay. All food outlets in here can put together a decent fish dish. There’s no harm in tasting Fish here. You can even choose the one that you want them to cook & they will cook that one for you. Now, I am not a Fish eater, but some of my friends are. And that’s what they have told me of these points. I ate the veg meal which was decent too.

When the shikara returns, you want to see the maximum of the place, and want to store those sights forever. That’s a beautiful place. It uplifts your mood. It leaves you with good memories.

Allepey backwaters is the place not to be missed ever 🙂