All is not revealed

Did a version of this for the May issue of The Hindu Literary Review

A few pages into Ajaz Ashraf’s The Hour Before Dawn I started feeling mildly panicky. Rasheed Halim, a New Delhi-based journalist and the book’s principal protagonist, had just stumbled across the possibility that the cancer he’d fought and seemingly defeated could return. And his rising panic at this discovery was infectious.

Rasheed’s struggle to deal with the trauma of a possible relapse is one of the stories at the core of this rather hefty book. Another major narrative is the mysterious appearance every morning of ‘Secret History’ — a series of posters on the walls of residential colonies in New Delhi — across November 1992. This ‘Secret History’, which portrays Muslims as invaders intent on plundering the country and wiping out all traces of Hinduism, claims it presents the ‘real’ history of India. ‘Secret History’ addresses Hindus, who it declares are “the only true people of this holy land” and exhorts them to rise and destroy the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992.

Several other narrative threads run through The Hour Before Dawn. These include Rasheed’s blossoming relationship with Uma, who helps run a helpline for people with psychological ailments; efforts by Rasheed and a bunch of others to unmask and stop ‘Secret History’s’ anonymous author; and the story of Wasim Khan, who is Rasheed’s neighbour, a devout Muslim with a catholic worldview and an Islamic scholar on a quest for “the nectar of the Invisible.”

Weaving all these strands into an engaging tale is a challenge that Ashraf tackles with limited success, as the narrative plods on to an ending where not all is revealed.

Some sections are extremely evocative, especially the bits that deal with Rasheed grappling with the idea of a relapse and all that it means, including the possibility of imminent death. Rasheed withdraws into a little bubble of dread and doom. And Ashraf captures this sense of darkness so well that it almost becomes a living being, one that sucks out every shred of positivity from the world around. Sample this passage that captures the pain, fear and confusion that envelop Rasheed: “Like drops of water falling from a leaking faucet, the thought of dying dripped into his consciousness. His was the pain of a man overwhelmed by the cruel certainty of his fate.”

I was also struck by how well Ashraf has crafted the various episodes of ‘Secret History’, with their catchy, over-the-top portrayal of events from India’s past. Of course, you soon realise they are exaggerated and fictionalised accounts; something Ashraf confirms in the afterword. Yet, there’s something beguiling about them, a bit like those e-mail forwards you get and promptly forward to people you’re not too fond of!

At the same time, the writing is often uneven and stilted, with convoluted sentences like this one: “They felt the emptiness similar to what is experienced on missing out on reading the newspaper in the morning, a regimen adhered to for years.”

The book is also afflicted by a jarring ‘article-itis' and ‘preposition-itis’ epidemic; with articles and prepositions being used in the wrong places and missing from where they’re needed.

I also found some of the sub-plots and details that crowd the book tangential, at best, to the overall narrative and quite exhausting. They add bulk to the book, but little heft to the plot. 

Which left me feeling that some incisive editing, which cut away the flab that weighs down this book and shaped a tauter tale, could have saved The Hour Before Dawn. That it didn’t happen is a pity. For the book presents a slice of recent Indian social history, the effects of which are still being felt. Equally important, it is a work of fiction, a historical thriller that also throws culture, religion and medicine into the mix. At another level though, it nudges us to reflect on what terms such as ‘history’, ‘trust’, ‘friendship’, ‘religion’, ‘liberal’, ‘fear’, ‘love’ and ‘life’ itself really mean.

Meeting the Blackbird

Did a version of this story for the March issue of National Geographic Traveller India magazine. 

My heart begins to race, even as my breath slows. Roosting on the polished floor, almost within arm’s reach, is something that has fascinated me for years: a ‘Blackbird’. Officially known as the Lockheed SR-71, the Blackbird is the world's fastest jet-propelled aircraft and flew reconnaissance missions for the US during the Cold War, before being pulled from service in the mid 1990s.
Aircraft have always interested me, possibly because of childhood exposure to military aircraft courtesy my aeronautical engineer father. My fascination with the Blackbird, though, began when I encountered it in Frederick Forsyth’s The Devil’s Alternative: “On a single thin nose wheel assembly, the bullet-like nose cone thrust upward at a shallow angle. Far down the fuselage, wafer-thin wings sprouted, delta shaped, being both wings and tail controls all in one… Body and engines resembled three hypodermic syringes, linked only by the wing. Small white U.S. stars in their white circles indicated its nationality; otherwise the SR-71 was black from nose to tail.”

The Udvar-Hazy Center's F-14 'Tomcat'

But that wasn’t quite the real deal. So when a trip to Washington DC came my way, on my ‘must visit’ list was the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. Described as a companion facility to the better known Air and Space Museum in downtown Washington DC, the Udvar-Hazy Center is aircraft heaven for an aviation buff. Its two cavernous hangars, adjoining the Dulles International Airport, house several hundred aviation and space-related artefacts including stars like the space shuttle ‘Discovery’, a Concorde and, of course, a Blackbird.
As I enter, the Blackbird is virtually the first aircraft I see, with the bulk of the Discovery looming in the distance. I learn that on its last flight on 6 March 1990 this particular SR-71 set a speed record, flying from Los Angeles to DC in 1 hour, 4 minutes and 20 seconds — an average speed of about 3,418 kilometers an hour!
Wandering through the Boeing Aviation Hangar, it strikes me that many of the aircraft on display have played a part in events that shaped the history of the world. The Boeing B-29 ‘Superfortress’ ‘Enola Gay’ changed the course of World War II when it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Others, like Bell’s UH-1H ‘Iroquois’ or ‘Huey’ helicopter were, literally, the face of the Vietnam War.

Some of the Udvar-Hazy Center's aircraft, including the Concorde

Aircraft in the museum’s collection have also played less muscular roles in history. The pencil-thin Air France Concorde that straddles one wing of the aviation hangar was the first supersonic airliner to fly from Paris to Rio de Janeiro, Washington DC and New York. And high up, almost near the hangar’s roof is the ‘Spirit of Columbus’, a Cessna 180, that Geraldine ‘Jerrie’ Mock flew in her record-creating feat to become the first woman to pilot an aircraft around the world.
I spend so much time with the aircraft that there’s little time left for the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar’s collection of rockets, missiles, satellites and other objects used in human spaceflight. Besides the Discovery, I make obligatory stops at the Mars Pathfinder Lander and a Mobile Quarantine Facility for astronauts returning from the Moon.
From a catwalk on the upper level I get a birds-eye view of the museum’s restoration hangar with several plastic-shrouded aircraft. My time is almost up, so I dash back to the aviation hangar for a rendezvous with the F-14 ‘Tomcat’, a fighter I first discovered thanks to the film Top Gun. There’s also just enough time for one last circumambulation of the Blackbird to end an aviation-fuelled morning.

As I leave the Udvar-Hazy Center, I realise that I’ve not sampled its other pleasures — the observation tower with its views of Dulles airport, the simulator rides and the Imax theatre. But then, there’s always next time I tell myself. 
The Vitals

Another view of the Blackbird

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is at 14390 Air and Space Museum Parkway, Chantilly, Virginia, close to Dulles International Airport. The museum is open 10 am to 5.30 pm on all days except December 25, with free conducted tours at 10.30 am and 1 pm. While entry is free, the simulator rides and Imax shows are ticketed. Public transport options to the museum include the Metro Sliver Line from DC to the Wiehle-Reston East station, transferring to the FairfaxConnector Route 983 bus to the museum. Alternatively, take Metrobus 5A from L’Enfant Plaza in DC to Dulles airport and a taxi or the Fairfax Connector Route 983 bus to the museum. For more: http://airandspace.si.edu/visit/udvar-hazy-center/

Art matters

A Guesswho creation in Fort Kochi

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is an interesting idea. Not merely because it is an event that has been started by artists, but because it has got people in the region, particularly those in Kerala, thinking about art.

Of course, what art is, is another matter altogether. What for me is art could be pretentious junk for someone else and vice-versa. 

Visiting Kochi a few weeks ago, the biennale popped up in almost every conversation I had. Not all the people I spoke to will actually visit the biennale — which ends on 29 March — but they were aware of it and interested in it.
And at the biennale itself, what was really exciting was to see that a large number of visitors were from Kochi and other parts of Kerala. Equally interesting were the expressions — or lack of them — on the faces of many visitors. In some instances, visitors’ expressions were actually more fascinating than the art on display. 

A Guesswho creation in Fort Kochi

Artists whose work struck me and linger in my mind include Benitha Perciyal, Lavanya Mani, Anish Kapoor, K. M. Vasudevan Namboodiri, Dayanita Singh, Gigi Scaria, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Martin Creed, Nikhil Chopra and Daniel Boyd.
For me though, the most striking intellectual souvenir of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014 has to be Guesswho’s art on the streets, even though it isn’t part of the event’s official programming. At first glance, the artist’s arresting marriage of local and global themes and icons evokes laughter. But then, you realise how layered they are. I was especially struck by the one next to the ticket booth at the Fort Kochi ferry station; the one featuring yesteryears Malayalam film star Prem Nazir as James Bond and the eclectic ecosystem of posters that had sprouted around it several weeks ago — public speaking classes, yoga, labour unions, a religious convention and the man with the gun. That’s a heady mix.  

By the lake

A version of this story is in the February issue of National Geographic Traveller India

As we drive through the gates of Anantya, my mobile phone buzzes indicating that it has no signal. And it stays signal-less for most of our three days at the resort. I wasn’t complaining though, for the holiday at Anantya was about getting some real downtime. 

The resort, which opened in 2013, is only a 90-minute drive from Thiruvananthapuram, but feels like it’s a world away. Situated in the midst of hundreds of acres of rubber plantations, Anantya is built on a patch of land that juts into the lake created by the Chittar dam, at the foothills of the Western Ghats. Once part of the erstwhile princely state of Travancore, the region is now in Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari district. It’s a charming amalgam of Tamil and Kerala influences, some of which are reflected in the resort’s mud-plastered walls, tiled roofs and woodwork.

Anantya’s heart is its open-plan restaurant and the adjoining infinity pool, both with spectacular views of the lake and the hills. Mealtimes were, in fact, one of the high points of our stay thanks to the very welcoming restaurant team and an eclectic menu that featured dishes like the sinfully rich, fiery Chicken Ghee Roast.

Patchy mobile phone signals and a few other quirks notwithstanding, the resort has many of the essentials of modern living; Wi-Fi and satellite television, for instance. And its spa has a range of ayurvedic therapies.

Activities on offer at the resort include a visit to a rubber plantation; bicycles to explore the resort’s winding pathways; facilities to play a bunch of sports; and a ‘games veranda’ with a view, an assortment of board games and a small library. The resort is also a good base for treks to the nearby hills and for day trips to the Padmanabhapuram Palace, Thirparappu waterfalls, Kanyakumari, the temples at Suchindram and Thiruvattar and the Chitharal Jain monuments.

We however, chose the easy life.  Our days were spent in our villa’s gazebo soaking up the view — the lake framed by the green of the rubber plantations and the hills beyond, a breeze ruffling the lake’s placid waters, darters fishing, dragonflies skittering across lily ponds, butterflies weaving through the lush vegetation. And luxuriating in the silence that we could almost touch, amplified by the thwack of an axe tearing through wood, the mewling of a prowling Brahminy kite and the distant drone of a vehicle engine. We just didn’t realise that time was passing by.

The Vitals

Anantya Travancore is in Kaliyal village, about 50km southeast of Thiruvananthapuram, in Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari district. The nearest airport is the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport (60km) and the nearest railway station is Marthandam (30km).

The resort has 21 villas across four categories — Chakra, Siddhi, Veda and Sadhana — varying in price from Rs 7,000 to Rs 15,000 (excluding taxes) from October to March. While all villas have views of the lake, the Siddhi villas, with an outdoor shower and gazebo (especially villas 6,7 and 8), and the Sadhana villas, with private plunge pools, have stunning views of the lake and the mountains beyond.

The old Gods haven't fled

A sliver of Thiruvananthapuram's skyline on an overcast evening

This was posted on Kafila a few days ago.

On a morning not long ago, chaya cup in hand, I was getting my regular Kafila fix, when I paused mid-click. What caught my eye was a headline with ‘Gods, Own and Country’ in it. Now that combination of words could only mean one thing — a piece on Kerala. It helped though that right below the headline was a picture of a Kathakali artist in sthree vesham or female makeup.
So I dived right into the essay on Thiruvananthapuram by Professor Mohan Rao. The first couple of lines had me grinning with delight for he wrote of his “four wonderful days” in the city, one that’s been my home for much of the past three decades. 
I was so pleased by this that I skimmed the next few lines. Only to be stopped in my tracks, almost spilling some scalding chaya on myself in the process, by the Professor’s declaration that “… Ganesha is not a deity widely worshipped in Kerala.” 
Now I’m no expert in Hinduism, but I do know that my extended, and very Malayali, family used to perform a ‘Ganapathy homam’ on a number of specific occasions; before moving into a new house, for instance. And this has been going on for decades. I also remember that both my grandmothers had an image of Ganapathy in their personal pooja spaces. Just to make sure that I hadn’t got my wires crossed, I checked with a couple of Malayali Hindu friends who confirmed that Ganapathy and Ganapathy homams were an integral part of their families’ religious landscape too. 
In fact, virtually every temple I’ve been to across Kerala has invariably had a Ganapathy shrine within. Why, the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple — arguably Thiruvananthapuram’s most well known place of worship — is home to the ‘Agrashala Ganapathy’. And around the corner from the Padmanabhaswamy temple is the ‘Pazhavangadi Maha Ganapathy Temple’. I believe it has been around for a couple of hundred years; since 1795 at the least. And for as long as I can remember, it is to Pazhavangadi Ganapathy that many Hindu denizens of the city, and from elsewhere, have turned to to smooth over obstacles or entreat a shot or two of good fortune.   

So why, I wondered, did the Professor believe that Ganesha is not “widely worshipped” in Kerala. And then it struck me — perhaps I had been misled all these years into believing that ‘Ganapathy’ is one of Ganesha’s several names!

At this point I decided that nourishment was required to fortify me to read the rest of the essay. Before I placed my order though, I took a few moments to toast the Professor for one of his inferences. He was on to something when he wrote: “Along the roads are posters of Ganesha, surrounded by saffron flags... Thus is the Shiva Sena announcing its presence in Kerala.”

In Thiruvananthapuram, over the past decade or so, Ganesha Chaturthi has evolved from a relatively low-key festival into a big, public celebration, with large Ganesha idols in temporary, road-side shrines and a procession to immerse the idols in the sea after 10 days of festivities. And yes, the Shiv Sena is possibly a major backer of this transformation. But is this cause for concern? I suspect not. For the Ganesha you encounter in Thiruvananthapuram is still a benevolent, lovable avatar. 

As I munched on some nibbles from Hotel Kavitha, my neighbourhood eatery, I learnt that the Professor had been struck by “the large number of vegetarian restaurants” in Thiruvananthapuram. So much so that he actually concluded: “While the local restaurants serving beef curry and appams also exist, they are clearly in a minority.” So astounding was this assessment about the sorry state of non-vegetarian cuisine in the city that I almost choked on my chicken kotthu parotta.

Yes, there are lots of vegetarian restaurants in the city. And yes, we enjoy the dosas and iddlis, puttu and kadala, chappathi and gobi 'manjoori' they dish out. But we love biryani, beef roast, fish curry, chilly chicken, chicken fry, shwarma and all those other delicious dishes that involve animals that were once alive, just as much.

Once again, I found myself wondering why! Why hadn’t the Professor spotted the scores of restaurants in Thiruvananthapuram, at various price points, that cater to our need for meat. In fact, if he’d ventured on to the city’s streets after sundown, he would have found it tough to dodge the ‘thattukadas’ that own the night with some of the best non-vegetarian cuisine in the city.

And for all the ‘arya’ named veggie restaurants that the Professor spotted, he appears to have missed the ones with ‘arul’, ‘saravana’ or ‘udupi’ worked into their names. This isn’t the “North Indian-Hinduisation of India” he believes it to be. It’s just clever restaurateurs trying to leverage the power of strong restaurant brands like Tamil Nadu’s Saravana Bhavan and Thiruvananthapuram’s own Ariya Nivas, which has been around for decades.

By now I found myself wondering whether the Professor had actually visited the city I live in. I know that residents often tend to overlook the familiar and that it is the visitor or outsider who notices things we take for granted. Yet, what was illuminating about the Professor’s essay was that he seemed to zero-in on some things, but was oblivious of other things that are equally, if not more, visible.

Let’s say I, like the Professor, had returned to Thiruvananthapuram after 30 years. What I’d probably notice is that so many men, let’s say ‘84 per cent’, seem to have eschewed mundus for trousers and jeans. But not the Professor, who was more struck that “The proportion of Mallu men without moustaches seems to have reached an unprecedented two per cent.”

Similarly, I’d notice the diversity of the clothes that women in the city now wear — more salwars, churidars, skirts and jeans. The Professor, though, declares: “Strikingly almost all Hindu women now wear bindis — hardly anyone did earlier — and a shockingly high proportion wear sindoors …” I don’t know about sindoor, but I did wonder how the Professor concluded that “all Hindu women” in the city wear bindis. I, for one, know many who don’t, just as I know many Christian women who do.

I empathise with the Professor’s discomfort at having to remove his footwear to enter the Sree Chitra Art Gallery and the Kuthira Malika Palace Museum (which he mistakenly calls the “museum of the Sri Chitra Thirunal Palace”). I couldn’t share his distress at this practice though, since I believe the ban on footwear in both institutions is about protecting their rather fragile, old floors. And we should try to take care of our heritage, shouldn’t we?  

As I worked my way towards the end of the Professor’s essay, I remembered the paragraph I’d skimmed over at the beginning. So I returned to the lead to read about the “thick lush greenness everywhere” that the Professor saw from his seventh-floor hotel room. Something I won’t quibble with — Thiruvananthapuram is certainly greener than many other Indian cities, with fewer high rises marking its skyline.

But then, the good Professor gave me another jolt, declaring there are “Hardly any high rises, an occasional mosque, temple or church rising above the green.” This is a bit of a stretch. From my seventh floor apartment it’s not “an occasional mosque, temple or church rising above the green” I see, but regular lines of apartment towers and commercial buildings sprouting out of the green to the north, south and west. And yes, the eastern reaches of the city are relatively greener, but even there I spot more concrete fingers breaking through the green every few months.  

The Professor’s next observation, though, was a sucker-punch. “But not that many apartment blocks,” he wrote, “Unlike Bangalore, the ones that have come up are not named Malibu Towers or Sacramento, but Revi Apartments.” While he is right that Thiruvananthapuram has fewer apartment complexes than Bangalore, not all of them are named like the ‘Revi Apartments’ he encountered. On one stretch of road I know rather well are a ‘Melody’, ‘Symphony’, ‘Alpine Heights’ and ‘Marigold’. And elsewhere in the city you’ll find a ‘Wimbledon’, ‘Carlton’, ‘Tivoli’, ‘Swiss Town’, ‘Kingswood’ and ‘Mayfair’. The Professor is spot-on about one thing though — there’s no Malibu Towers or Sacramento in Thiruvananthapuram. Yet.

And no, the old Gods haven’t fled. They’ve just retreated to the shadows to allow the new demi-Gods their time to Trend or be Liked.

Ferry notes

A shorter version is in this month’s Second Anniversary issue of National Geographic Traveller India. The published piece is not on the Nat Geo website, so there’s no link to it. So pick up the issue. 

“The boat service is dying out, you know,” says Raju, the driver of the autorickshaw I am in. We’re careening through the pre-dawn darkness of Kottayam in his auto, heading towards the “boat station” at Kanjiram. I’ve just told him that I plan to take a public ferry from Kanjiram to Alappuzha on Kerala’s coast.

“With more roads and bridges, there aren’t many takers for the ferry. It’s quite slow, you know,” he explains, perhaps perplexed by my interest in the ferry. But when I tell him that I’m a writer, he exhales in understanding as though all is revealed.

As dawn breaks, Raju drops me off at the Kanjiram jetty, an asbestos-roof shed with a small concrete pier. It is the terminus for the Kerala State Water Transport Department’s daily Kottayam-Alappuzha boat service.

The first departure of the day is at 7.15 a.m., although timings can change if a boat has been sent for repairs. I’m rather early, so I sit on a ledge and study the ferry. This is no elegant creation of wood, glass and metal, but a squat, wooden workhorse that looks like it’s been around for a while. Noticing me on the pier, the ferry’s crew invites me on board and tells me to make myself at home. I pick a seat in the prow and wait.

A cat anticipating breakfast

Today, houseboats prowl Kerala’s backwaters, that intricate, interconnected maze of rivers, lakes, and canals that spread across Kottayam, Alappuzha, Kochi, and Kollam. A while ago though, these waterways were the liquid highways connecting large parts of Kerala and ferries were the region’s mass rapid transit systems, linking inland trading centres like Kottayam with Alappuzha on the coast. In A History of Travancore published in 1878, P. Shangoonny Menon, scholar and official in the government of Travancore, writes how in the 1750s: “Several canals were opened to facilitate and extended communication from the back-water to the new town of Alleppey (Alappuzha).”

My interest in the ferry though is personal: I’ve heard older friends and family talk about running errands, or commuting to work on it. As one friend put it, “The ferry was my physical link to the outside world.” With the evolution of faster modes of transport, public ferries may no longer be very popular, but they’re still a window into the region; a window I wanted to open.

I’m woken from my reverie by the voices of people trickling on board. Several carry plastic sacks bulging at the seams; others are armed with fishing rods and nets or farm implements. Almost everyone seems to have a newspaper. Most passengers seem to be regulars; greetings are offered and gossip exchanged. A few choose a seat and dive into their newspapers, while others swap tales about farm workers playing truant. And then, with a toot or two, we’re off.

The glistening 'blackwaters' against the sun

It’s a beautiful early summer morning, the sun is still a baby and there’s a cool breeze. Along the waterways people are beginning their day: brushing teeth, washing clothes and utensils; cleaning fish, and mending nets. We pull up by a makeshift pier for the crew to fix a mechanical issue. A fishmonger’s boat is docked nearby and a passenger makes use of this unscheduled stop to inspect his catch. She returns to the ferry triumphant, a handful of fish wrapped in newspaper.

As the canal opens out into the Vembanad Lake it’s easy to see why Kerala’s backwaters lure people from across the world. I feel like I’m in the middle of the perfect postcard, with green fields that stretch to the horizon, flocks of birds wheeling overhead, battalions of coconut trees guarding the banks, and lotuses blooming in water tinged gold by the rising sun. It’s all rather intoxicating.

We pass churches, mosques, temples, and houses in almost every colour of the rainbow — bright hues of violet, indigo, green, and orange. There are “cool bars” and “fish centres” and more mundane tea shops, hotels and Ayurveda centres that promise “relaxing” massages. For a while, we’re escorted by a squadron of ducks. Like an elephant, the bulk of a houseboat emerges from the mist, a film song booming from an extra-large telly on its deck.

The boat putters along, zigzagging across the water to pick up or drop off passengers. Some jetties are crumbling concrete slabs that seem to be in the middle of nowhere; at one, a dog greets a man as he steps off the boat and they head off into the distance.

A cheerful 'cool bar' and 'fish centre' 

I observe the people on board. There aren’t too many of us, only about 30. In the row of seats right behind me a tourist from Germany and a commuter talk about cameras and lenses; the conversation then veers to toddy tapping. The aroma of sambar and warm idlis wrapped in banana leaves wafts across the boat. My stomach lets out a low growl in response: A family has just opened its breakfast pack.

As we get closer to Alappuzha, the action picks up. The waterways get busier and more people are waiting to board the ferry at each stop. At one jetty a small gaggle of scrubbed, giggling schoolboys gets on. They head to the prow, prop themselves on the sills, and watch me scribble in my notebook. They begin a discussion about why this saipu or “foreigner” is writing notes. When I join the conversation in Malayalam, there are half-embarrassed smiles around.

Soon, the boat is as crowded as the Metro at rush hour. And suddenly, we’re in Alappuzha town inching through water hyacinth and trash towards the main boat station. It’s a little after 9.30 a.m. and there’s a small crowd waiting to board the ferry on it’s return trip.

I’ve had a lovely morning on the backwaters for just Rs 16. As I head away from the crowded jetty, it strikes me that the ferry’s days of glory may perhaps be over, but it still matters to many people in the region.  And that’s just the way it should be.

The Vitals

• A one-way Kottayam-Alappuzha trip on the Kerala State Water Transport Department’s ferry usually takes a little over two hours and costs about Rs 16 depending on the route.
• The ferry terminus in Kottayam is currently at Kanjiram, about 9 km from the town centre. In Alappuzha, the terminus is in the heart of the town.
• There are several trips a day: The first scheduled Kanjiram (Kottayam)-Alappuzha trip is at 7.15 am, the last at 5.45 pm. The first Alappuzha-Kanjiram boat is at 7.30 am, the last at 5.15 pm.
• Timings can change so it’s best to check with either the station master at Kottayam (+91-94000-50371) or Alappuzha (+91-94000-50324 / +91-477-2252510)
• There are mobile phones on the Kottayam-Alappuzha ferries (+91-94000-50372/+91-94000-50373), though the crew may not answer while the boats are running.
• There are no restrooms on the ferries and you’ll have to carry your own refreshments.
• The Water Transport Department also operates ferries from Alappuzha to other destinations in the region. It also runs the ‘See Kuttanad’ service from Alappuzha for commuters and tourists. The first boat usually leaves at 5.30 am and a round trip takes about three hours. A one-way ticket for an adult on the upper deck costs Rs 80 and the lower deck Rs 30.