The viewpoint is named after a race

Kollam’s waterfront is confusing on first acquaintance. Parks run into each other, a boat jetty sits among them, a bridge crosses an arm of water to the south, and nothing explains how any of it relates to anything else.

There is a key, and it is hiding in a name. The one formally named viewpoint on this shore is called Presidents Trophy View Point, and once you know what it is pointed at, the whole waterfront resolves into a single legible line.

A viewpoint no tourism site lists

It exists on the map and on the ground: OpenStreetMap node 2751386006, at 8.89183, 76.58548, tagged as a viewpoint, standing on the Kollam town waterfront immediately beside the boat jetty. It looks north and north-west up the open water towards Kureepuzha and the bypass bridge. It is free, it is open shore, it is about two kilometres from Chinnakada, and every bus and auto in the district passes near it.

We could not find it on a single tourism website — including our own, which until recently told readers there were no named viewpoints on this lake at all. That was wrong, and this node is the plainest evidence of it.

The line on the water

Kerala Tourism describes the course in one sentence: "The 1200-metre race track extends from the Thevalli bridge across Ashtamudi Lake to the boat jetty near the KSRTC bus station."

Both ends are on the map. Thevally Bridge is way 283398358, at 8.90347, 76.57939. Kollam Boat Jetty is node 191766533, at 8.89196, 76.58520. The straight-line distance between them is about 1.4 km, which is consistent with a 1,200 m course laid within it — and the viewpoint sits twenty metres from the jetty, at the finish.

That is the whole trick of this place. The viewpoint is not a scenic overlook that someone gave a name to. It is a grandstand.

You can walk the racecourse

And because both ends are on land you can reach, the course is walkable along the shore in about twenty minutes, which is the best short walk on this lake and appears in no itinerary we have seen.

Start at the Thevally end, where the bridge carries the road over the arm of water below Thevally Palace, and walk north. You pass the palace’s lakefront; the Chinese fishing nets mapped at 8.90673, 76.58441, cantilevered over the water in the middle of a town; the Ashramam park frontage, which is a genuine run of public ground on the shore — the Adventure Park, the Children’s Park, the Residency Bungalow grounds, a butterfly park, a west-side park; the Adventure Park boat terminal at 8.89741, 76.58475; and you finish at the jetty, standing at the finish line, looking back down the water you have just walked beside.

Do it in the late afternoon. The whole walk faces water, and the working jetty at the end of it is busy with boats until well after dark.

Why it is called that

The first President’s Trophy Boat Race was held here on 31 August 2011, watched by the then President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Patil — which is where the name comes from, and why a viewpoint on a town shore carries the word "Presidents" with an awkward apostrophe missing.

Sixteen snake boats competed in that first edition. It was won by Ganeshan Chundan, rowed by the Kollam St Francis Boat Club — a local crew winning the inaugural running of a race named for a visiting head of state, on their own water. The programme also carried the Veppu, Iruttukuthi and Thekkanvadi categories, the smaller craft classes that make up a Kerala regatta around the snake boats everybody photographs.

The race is now a leg of the Champions Boat League, Kerala Tourism’s league-format restyling of the state’s boat races into a season with points and standings.

Do not plan a trip around it

Here is the caveat that matters, and we would rather give it than a confident date. Kerala Tourism’s own page on this race states no fixed annual month, no fixed date, no spectator arrangements and no ticketing. Plenty of sites will tell you it is "every August", from the 2011 date; that is an inference, not a published schedule, and we are not going to repeat it.

What you can rely on is the course, which is there every day of the year whether or not a boat is on it. Treat the race as a bonus if the calendar happens to align, and the walk as the reason to come.

Two eras of water-facing architecture, 1,200 metres apart

One last thing, which we like more than we can justify. Thevally Palace, at the start line, was built to be arrived at by boat — the lake elevation is the one that was meant to be seen, and the road side is its back. It is now the headquarters of an NCC group and closed to visitors, so the lakefront and the bridge are how you see it.

So a nineteenth-century building designed around arriving by water stands at the start of a twenty-first-century boat race, and the modern grandstand stands at the other end. Kollam’s two eras of turning to face the water are 1,200 metres apart, with a straight line of lake between them, and you can walk it.