Kumarakom, India
Sunrise over the Keralan backwaters is meant to be particularly magical, so I awake just before six and creep out of the cabin, treading over Randeep who is asleep outside our door. Unfortunately my view of the sun breaking over the horizon is obscured by trees so I need to leave the boat to get a good view but the only way ashore is through the kitchen and out of the back door, which is locked.
The stillness and solitude is pretty special though, so I sit up top and watch the wildlife and take advantage of the early hour to write up some of our adventures. After a while Randeep appears to tell me I can hop ashore so I venture into the field by the boat and snap away at the orange sun making its ascent. It's not quite as stunning as hoped but still a moment to remember.
Coman arises just before 8am, in time for breakfast. We eat as we cruise back towards Alleppy, arriving at 9am to a waiting Tensing. We have just a short drive today, about an hour or so, towards Kumarakom, where we will be spending our final night in Kerala at a homestay called Philipkutty Farm, on the banks of a backwater by Vembanad lake.
It’s even hotter today, and we wait in the car, grateful for the air-conditioning as a boat is slowly punted across from the far shore. We load our bags into it and hop on board, waving goodbye to Tensing and wondering what awaits us on the other side… not quite expecting the paradise that unfolds.
Philipkutty Farm is owned by a woman called Anu, whose grandfather in law – Mr Philip Kutty – helped create the island on which it sits in the 1950s, reclaiming the land using ancient techniques to create a rice field. Rice became such a low value cash crop that they changed their business to become a coconut plantation and expanded the farm to become a fully sustainable family business. He died in 1997 and left the farm to his son, Anu’s husband, who two years later built a small cottage so that tourists could stay a night or two on the farm and experience life on the Keralan backwaters.
Sadly he himself died just a few years later at the age of 32, leaving the farm to Anu and her two very young children. Rather than let tragedy overwhelm her, she set about developing both the farm and the tourism side, so that they now have a profitable farm, six beautiful homestay cottages and were even featured on Rick Stein’s recent series on India, where Anu taught Rick how to cook her famous Prawn Molee.
Anu greets us as we disembark the boat and brings us into the main house, where her dachshund, named Peanut, gives us an excitable welcome. While we sip on a wonderful homemade ginger and lime drink our bags are taken to our cottage, Chempakam, which was apparently the first of the cottages. It’s absolutely delightful, a huge room with gorgeous furniture and all mod-cons, including a great bathroom.
By the kitchen her mother, Anima, is giving a cookery demonstration to some other guests, preparing the lunch which is served soon after. We all eat communally in a beautiful outdoor library, sat around a large table with a lazy susan at its centre on to which are loaded dish after dish of wonderful food. We have various fish curries, lentils, pickles, an amazing beetroot and yoghurt dish and various rice, chapattis and poppadoms, all absolutely delicious. Dessert is rice pudding with coconut and jaggery in a banana leaf.
Our fellow guests are all English – George and Lucinda, with their two daughters Laura and Sophie; a couple from Newcastle in their thirties called Ross and Laura; and a younger couple called Ed and Imogen from the home counties. It’s all rather well-to-do and we’re all obviously experienced travellers swapping tales of foreign climes and – as is inevitable in these instances – dodgy tummies, inspired because George has succumbed to Delhi belly and is particularly unwell.
The afternoon is spent in sheer blissful relaxation sat by the water’s edge as there is nothing to do but relax. Coman lazes reading in a hammock while I watch boats glide past our ridiculous idyllic setting. Later Anu gives us a tour of the grounds, with a small demonstration of the local art of coir rope making, using coconut fibres for matting. We walk through the farm as she shows us their produce - mahogany, holy basil, bird of paradise flowers, passion fruit, mango trees, coconut, banana, nutmeg, papaya, turmeric, ginger, all-spice, cinnamon, water lilies, frangipani, bougainvillea and more.
They have cows that produce milk, butter and yoghurt, as well as methane to cook with and manure to fertilize the land. Some of the cows are tiny and from a local very rare breed called the Vechoor cow, named after the next village, whose milk has special medicinal properties There is even a two-day old calf, lying by its mother.
Geese, chickens and ducks all roam around and Anu explains that the farm is eco-based and organic and they now employ 25 people from the local village, giving them jobs in an area where there is very little employment. She smiles as she congratulates us on being responsible tourists, helping the local people and area rather than handing money over to hotel chains. It’s a canny move on her part, but true.
After the farm tour we hop into the little boat with Ross, Laura, Ed and Imogen and are punted out onto the lake where we watch the sunset, all fiery and glowing into the trees and water as a church service on the distant shore carries its amplified prayers across the still waters towards us. Our return to the jetty is filled with exotic bird noises; a chorus of trilling, singing, cawing and squawking as dusk falls.
After we’ve freshened up, Coman and I sit and watch as Amina cooks the dishes for our dinner in big metal pots, showing us the various spices she uses. We are treated to the dish that Anu made for Rick Stein and which he published in his book to accompany the series, but tonight it is made with a local freshwater fish called kalanchi in Malayalam, and sometimes known as calabasa. We also watch as Anima cooks a chicken curry and a vegetable curry before we all sit down once more to eat together.
Once dinner is done at 9pm, we all drift off to our cottages for an early night in this most incredible of settings, probably the most peaceful we’ve ever stayed. Imogen and I have booked a yoga session at dawn with a teacher who’s travelling down from Cochin specifically to take us through our sun salutations as it rises over the waters. This time the sunrise really will be magical!
