Houseboats of Kerala

The houseboats of today - big, sluggish moving, strange barge used for leisure trips - are the reworked kettuvalloms of olden times. The new kettuvalloms were used to transport tonnes of rice and spices - a measure kettuvallom can have upward to 30 tonnes - from Kuttanad to the Kochi port. The kettuvallam or ‘boat with knots’- was then called because the whole boat was held jointly with coir knots simply - not still an unmarried nail is used during the building. The boat is made of planks of jack-wood joined jointly with coir. This is so coated with an acerbic dark resin made from boiled cashew kernels. With cautious upkeep, a kettuvallom can live for generations. A part of the kettuvallom was covered with bamboo and coir to do as a restroom and kitchen for the crowd. Meals would be cooked on panel and supplemented with sweet fish from the backwaters. Today, the custom is yet continued and the nutrient from the local cuisine is served by the Kuttanad localites, on panel.

When the contemporary trucks replaced this structure of transportation, some one establish an original manner that would hold these boats, nearly all of which were much than 100 years older, in the marketplace. By constructing particular rooms to fit travelers, these boats cruised ahead from near- extermination to love their existing good popularity. Now these are a conversant view on the backwaters and in Alleppey only, there are as many as 120 houseboats. While converting kettuvallams into houseboats, maintenance is taken to take simply normal products. Bamboo mats, sticks and forest of the aracanut tree are used for roofing, coir mats and wooden planks for the flooring and forest of coconut trees and coir for beds. For lighting though, solar panels are used.

Today, the houseboats have all the animal comforts of a better hotel including furnished bedrooms, contemporary toilets, comfy living rooms, a kitchen and still a balcony for angling. Parts of the curving roof of forest or plaited palm available away to offer shadow and permit unbroken views. While most boats are poled by local oarsmen, some are powered by a 40 HP locomotive. Boat-trains - formed by joining two or much houseboats jointly - are too used by big groups of sight-seers. What is really magic about a houseboat drive is the exciting opinion of the unaffected and otherwise unreachable agricultural Kerala.