Alappuzha is the centre of Kerala’s houseboat industry and that is how it is sold, which means most visitors experience it as a car park, a jetty and a boat. The town behind the jetty was laid out on purpose in 1762 as a trading port, and it is one of the few places in India where you can see a planned eighteenth-century commercial town still doing recognisably the same job.
Two halves, and give each one a day
How to divide it
| Half | What | How long |
|---|---|---|
| The water | Houseboat or shikara, the canals, Punnamada, the public ferries | A day, or a day and a night |
| The town | The two canals, the godown facades, Mullakkal, Gujarati Street and the Jain temple, the mosques, the beach and the old pier | A day on foot |
The second half is the one people skip and the one that makes the trip. It is compact, it is walkable, and it is legible: the canals are the street plan, the warehouses are the reason the canals are there, and the merchant streets are who was recruited to fill them.
Take the public ferry at least once
The State Water Transport boats are the backwaters as infrastructure rather than as a product — people going to work, to school, to the market, on a timetable, for a few rupees. The long service to Kollam is most of a day on the water and is one of the genuine bargains of Indian travel; the shorter local runs give you the same thing in an hour.
If you also want the overnight houseboat, take it, and read our Kumarakom piece on how to choose one that treats its sewage first. About six hundred boats work these waters and only around a hundred can prove they treat what they produce.
The two dates that take over the town
- The Nehru Trophy snake-boat race on Punnamada, in August. The town fills completely and rates go with it. We have a separate guide.
- Mullakkal Chirappu in November–December — 41 days, of which the last 11 take over the main shopping street.
- The monsoon, June to August, is low season, cheap, and genuinely atmospheric on a backwater. It is not beach weather.
- The heritage-project museums are of uncertain opening status. Phone ahead rather than trusting a webpage.
What Alappuzha does not have
No hill and no forest — the district is flat and wet, and the Ghats are two or three hours east. No fort or palace. Its beach is a long grey working beach with the ruined piers on it, pleasant in the evening and not a resort beach. It has no airport; Kochi is about an hour and a half north. And the town centre is congested and, in stretches, shabby — a fair number of the handsome old buildings are shut and unrestored, which is exactly what the heritage project exists to address.
It is also not quiet. If you want the backwaters without the industry around them, Kumarakom is calmer and Kollam is quieter and cheaper than either.
Two days that work
Day one on the water: out early by shikara into the narrow canals where the big boats cannot go, back for the middle of the day, and a public ferry in the afternoon. Day two on foot: the canals and the godown facades in the morning, Mullakkal and Gujarati Street before lunch, and the beach and the old pier at sunset. If you have a third day, go south to Ambalappuzha and Karumadi, or east into Kuttanad, which is where the rice that built this port actually grows.