Venice of the East — 1,500 km of coconut-lined backwater canals, overnight houseboat drifting, and snake-boat races that draw 200,000 spectators to Punnamada Lake
Alleppey (officially Alappuzha, pop. 175,000) in Kerala is the entry point to the Kerala Backwaters — a network of approximately 1,500 km of interconnected canals, rivers, lakes, and tidal inlets running parallel to the Arabian Sea behind the Kerala coast. The backwater system is a completely distinct ecosystem from the sea: freshwater flowing from the Western Ghats rivers meets salt water from the sea to create a brackish environment where rice cultivation (on low-lying paddy fields called kuttanad, the only place in Asia where rice is grown below sea level), coconut groves, and fishing vill…
The Kerala backwaters were central to the spice trade that made Malabar the most economically important coastline in the world between the 8th and 16th centuries — Arab traders used the backwater canals to move pepper, cardamom, and cinnamon from the Western Ghats to Cochin and Quilon ports, and the Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonial powers all recognized the backwater canal system as militarily and economically strategic. Alleppey town was founded by Dewan Raja Kesavadas in 1762 as a planned trading city for the Kingdom of Travancore, with canals dug in a grid pattern. The coir (coconut…