Alappuzha

Alleppey, 53 km south of Kochi — houseboats, canals, a pier at sunset and the biggest choice of rooms outside the city.

Alappuzha, still widely called Alleppey, is a town of canals, coir warehouses and colonial-era godowns 53 km south of Kochi, and it is the place almost every backwater trip in Kerala actually starts. Vembanad lake opens east of the town, the Punnamada finishing point is where the Nehru Trophy Boat Race ends on the second Saturday of August, and several hundred houseboats moor along that shore waiting for guests. Whether that is magical or industrialised depends entirely on how you book it: a good boat is a very good night, and a bad one is a floating room in a traffic jam of identical floating rooms.

The town itself is more interesting than its reputation suggests. Mullackal Street is a genuine shopping bazaar with the Rajarajeswari temple at its head, gold shops, spice merchants and a permanent crush of scooters. The canals — Vadai, Commercial, Kommady — cut the grid into blocks crossed by low iron bridges, and the coir industry that built the place is still visible in the retting pits and the warehouse doors. At the western edge, Alappuzha beach has the ruined 1862 pier marching out into the sea and a lighthouse from the same decade.

At 9pm the beach road is busy with families and peanut carts, the restaurants on the canal-side lanes and around the Iron Bridge are still serving karimeen for ₹450 to ₹700, and a handful of licensed bars in hotels keep going until 11. Backpacker cafes near the boat jetty close earlier than you expect. It is not a party town and never has been.

Room prices are the widest of anywhere in this guide: ₹900 hostel dorms, ₹1,800 to ₹3,500 heritage guesthouses in restored coir mansions, ₹7,000 to ₹13,000 for an overnight one-bedroom houseboat with three meals. Come for two nights — one on land, one on water. Three nights and you will have seen everything twice.

Where to stay in Alappuzha

The two good bands are the canal quarter around Mullackal, Convent Square and the Vadai canal, where restored merchant houses run ₹1,800 to ₹4,500 and everything is walkable, and the Punnamada shore towards Finishing Point, where lakeside resorts charge ₹5,000 to ₹14,000 and you wake up to water. Marari beach, 11 km north, is the quiet, expensive alternative for people who want sand and nothing else. Avoid booking a houseboat blind through a street tout at the jetty: agree on air conditioning hours, the exact mooring point and whether the boat actually leaves the main channel, because the cheap ₹5,500 boats often do not. Also avoid the strip of lodges immediately behind the KSRTC bus stand — cheap, loud and a long walk from anything you came for. Book weeks ahead for the August race.