How to choose the right boat for your group
Bedrooms, decks and who you are travelling with: a short guide before you book.
Your first night on a houseboat, hour by hour
From boarding at noon to the jetty at nine: what a 22-hour cruise actually looks like.
Most guests arrive at our Punnamada jetty between 11.30 am and noon. The crew carries your bags aboard, you are shown your room, and a welcome drink of tender coconut is waiting on the deck. By 12.30 the boat is moving, and lunch is served soon after: rice, fish curry, a thoran, a pickle and pappadam.
The afternoon is the main cruise. The driver takes you out across Punnamada, past the start of the boat race course, and down into the narrower channels of Kainakary, where the paddy fields lie lower than the water. Tea and pazham pori come out at about four.
At 5.30 pm the boat must moor. This is a rule on Vembanad, not our choice, and it is the best part of the day. The crew ties up beside a village bank, the engines go off, and the lake goes quiet as the light goes. You can walk along the bund, watch the ducks being brought home, or just sit.
Dinner is at about eight. The generator and air-conditioning run from nine. At six the next morning the mist is on the water; breakfast is appam and stew, and the boat starts back at about eight. You are at the jetty by nine.
