Amazing Allappey

Allappey
The Main Tourist Attraction In Kerala, and one of the main Ones In All Of India, Is Riding On The Kerala Backwaters And Experiencing Village Life On The Shores As You Float Past. The Backwaters Are A Vast Network Of Canals, Rivers, And Streams That Run Throughout The State, With Certain Sections Much More Opened To Tourism Than Others. For The Villagers, These Waterways aAre The Only Form Of Transportation In Some Places, And Ferries Act Like Local Buses Shuttling People Around.
Most Tourists Rent A Houseboat, Which Is A Fancy Old Rice Boat Converted Into A Floating Bamboo House And They Can Get As Luxurious As Having Satellite TV And Air Conditioning, And They All Come With A Driver And A Set Of Cooks. You Can See A Bunch Of Them In The Photos. We Considered This Option But Decided Against It Because It Would Be Very Expensive, Is Horrible For The Environment And Local Ecology, And Also It Seemed A Bit Boring Or Hands Off For Us. We’d Rather Experience The Village Life By Being In It Rather Than Floating Past It, So That’s What We Did.
We Arranged To Stay In A Guest House / Home Stay Type Thing On One Of The Islands In The Backwaters Around Allepey, Which Is The Main Tourist Destination For The Backwaters. We Took A Bus From Cherthala To Allepey, And The Boarded A Ferry For About 1 Hours To Reach Our Destination. It Was A Gorgeous Location Tucked In Amongst All The Other Houses Ringing The Coast Of The Island, Which Has A Massive Communal Rice Field In The Center. We Spent Two Nights There, Passing The Time By Taking Walks, Talking With The Other Travelers, And One Afternoon Renting Bikes And Riding Around On The Main Land Along Another Series Of Canals. For Our Last Night We Had To Leave The Main House And Travel Another 25 Minutes By Boat To Another Homestay That Was Part Of This Larger Network Of Hosts. We Were Only There For One Meal And To Sleep, But It Was Nice Being The Only Guests With This Family And Being Even More Removed From Any Other Tourists. In The Photos You Can See The Scenery, The House Boats, The Rice Fields, Life Along The Canals.