Alleppey
Kerala, India
Nine hundred kilometres of connected canal, lake and river, with rice fields farmed below sea level and a converted grain barge for a bedroom.
- Trips here
- On request
- From
- On request
- Next departure
- On request
- State
- Kerala
No fixed dates in Alleppey yet
We run Alleppey privately, on your dates, until the fixed departures are set.
Ask us for Alleppey dates
We publish a departure only once the season, the stay and the guide are settled. Until then we run private versions — same leaders, your dates.
- A planner calls you back, usually the same working day.
- Tell us the month and we will say if it is the wrong one.
- You hear from us first when the fixed dates go live.
Talk it through first
A planner calls you back, no obligation.
What to know about Alleppey
Alappuzha was built as a port town on a grid of canals, and the water still organises everything. Vembanad, the lake it opens onto, is the longest in India; the Kuttanad farmland behind it is worked two metres below sea level, kept dry by bunds and pumps, and is one of the few places on earth where paddy is grown that way.
The kettuvallam — literally a 'tied boat', once a rice barge stitched together with coir and no nails — is now the standard way to spend a night on the backwaters. The difference between a good houseboat trip and a bad one is entirely about where it moors: the main Punnamada channel is busy and noisy, the narrow canals off it are neither.
When to go. September to March for dry, still water. The Nehru Trophy Boat Race, the largest snake-boat event in Kerala, is rowed on Punnamada on the second Saturday of August — worth planning around if you are here in the monsoon.
Photographs of Alleppey by their creators — photo credits.
