The Kerala backwaters — a 900-kilometre network of canals, lagoons and lakes that stretches inland from the coast — is the experience that, more than anything else, drew you to look up Kerala in the first place. There are two main ways to see it. They are quite different. Most travellers don't realise this until they arrive.
The houseboat
The classic kettuvallam — a converted rice barge, 60 to 80 feet long, fitted out with one to four bedrooms, a small kitchen, a chef and a captain — is what most people picture when they think of the backwaters. You board around noon. Lunch is served on the upper deck as you drift through the wide central canals around Alleppey. The boat moors at sunset in a quiet spot away from the main channels. Dinner is freshly cooked on board. You sleep to the sound of frogs and water.
The pros: it is genuinely lovely, especially at dawn. It is private. The food is excellent. You can do nothing for twenty-four hours and feel that you have had a complete experience. The cons: the wide central canals around Alleppey have become quite busy with houseboat traffic, and the experience can feel less remote than the photographs suggest. Choose a boat that operates from Kumarakom (on the eastern side of Vembanad Lake) instead, and the route is far quieter.
Cost: $75 – 260 for a two-bedroom boat for 24 hours, all meals included.
The canoe (or kayak)
The alternative is to take a small wooden country canoe — paddled by a local guide — through the narrow village canals that the houseboats cannot enter. These trips run from two to six hours, and they take you into a backwater that is invisible from the main channels: rice paddies, coir-making villages, kingfishers, water buffalo, schoolchildren walking along the embankments, women washing clothes on the steps of their homes.
The pros: it is the more intimate, more authentic experience by some distance. You see real village life rather than the postcard. You meet people. Cons: there is no overnight option (most trips are half-day), and it requires a little more energy.
Cost: $20 – 45 per person for a half-day, with a guide.
Our recommendation
Do both. Take a half-day canoe trip in the morning from a village south of Alleppey, eat lunch at a small homestay, and board a Kumarakom houseboat in the afternoon for the overnight stay. You will have seen the backwaters in two genuinely different registers, and the contrast — the intimate canals at dawn, the wide lake at sunset — is the way we recommend it to every friend who asks.