Questions
The things people ask first.
Answered plainly, and where we do not have an answer yet we have left the question off rather than written something that sounds like one. Anything missing, ask us — that is what the enquiry is for.
Planning a journey
Tell us who is travelling, roughly when, and what you did the week before. That is enough to begin. We come back with a shortlist — including the things we would talk you out of — and it goes from there.
Within a day, usually the same one. We are in India, on monday to saturday, 9.00 to 19.00 ist, so a message sent from Europe in the evening is usually answered while you sleep.
None of them is. They are the thirty-nine routes we know best, and most of what we actually run is one of them adjusted — longer here, shorter there, or two of them joined. Tell us what you had in mind instead.
Because a journey is quoted rather than priced. The same route costs one thing for two people travelling in February and another for six in July, and publishing a number that is wrong for almost everybody helps nobody. Ask, and you get a real figure for your dates and your party.
One of the people who plans the journeys. There is no enquiry desk and no ticket number — there are not many of us, which is the point, and the people who will answer you have been arranging travel in South India for the better part of three decades.
Yes. Kerala is home and it is where we are strongest, but the journeys run across eight regions of India, from the Konkan and Goa up to Rajasthan, the cities, Darjeeling and the Andamans.
When to come
October to March, and December to February most of all: dry, clear, and warm without being punishing. It is also when everybody else comes, so the good rooms go early.
The south-west monsoon runs roughly June to September and a second, lighter one comes through in October and November. It rains hard and then stops; the state turns an almost unreasonable green, the light is extraordinary, and there is nobody about. It is not the wrong time to come — it is simply a different trip.
Hot and humid at sea level. The hill country — Munnar, Wayanad, the tea estates — is the sensible answer in those months, and it is beautiful in a way the coast is not.
You will manage in English almost everywhere in Kerala; literacy here is among the highest in India and English is widely spoken. The state's own language is Malayalam, and a word or two of it is received very warmly.
Getting here
Cochin (COK) for the backwaters and for most of what we run — it is the closest to the water and the best connected. Thiruvananthapuram (TRV) if you are starting in the south, Kozhikode (CCJ) or Kannur (CNN) for the north. Kerala has four international airports for a state you can drive the length of in a day, which tells you something about how much of it people want to reach.
With one change, almost always. The usual routes are through a Gulf hub — Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi — or through Istanbul, and there are good onward connections from Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru if you are already in India. Nobody flies direct from Europe to Kochi; anyone offering you a non-stop is selling you a connection.
Cochin airport to Alappuzha is about 85 kilometres. Allow two hours rather than the ninety minutes the map promises — the road is single carriageway in places and goes through towns. Thiruvananthapuram to Alappuzha is roughly 150 kilometres and closer to three hours.
Often, yes. The coastal line runs almost the whole length of Kerala and both Alappuzha and Kollam sit on it, with Ernakulam Junction as the hub. It is not fast — Ernakulam to Alappuzha is about an hour, though the road in traffic can take the best part of two — and it is one of the better ways to watch the state go by. We will tell you when the train is the better answer and when it is not.
Longer than the distances suggest. Kerala is long and narrow, the roads are busy, and forty kilometres an hour is a realistic average rather than a pessimistic one. It is the single thing most first itineraries get wrong, and the reason we will usually argue for one fewer place and one more night.
Almost certainly. Most British and European passport holders travel on India's e-Visa, which is applied for online before you leave and takes a few days. The rules and the fees change, so check the current position for your own nationality rather than trusting a travel page — including this one.
Houseboats
Check-in starts at 12:00, and check-out is at 09:00 the next morning. The boat is yours from noon: lunch is served on board not long after you step on.
Yes. A welcome drink, lunch, evening tea with snacks, dinner and breakfast the next morning are all included and cooked on board.
No, and no houseboat in Kerala does. Boats anchor in the evening — local navigation regulations require it — which is the quietest part of the whole trip and, for most guests, the part they remember.
Yes, during the scheduled operating hours. The generator does not run all night, which is deliberate: the backwaters at three in the morning are worth hearing.
The one-bedroom boat takes two guests comfortably. The two-bedroom boat takes up to seven. Larger parties are arranged as more than one boat travelling together.
Where you stay
No. Every one of them is independent — family houses, small hotels, camps and houseboats belonging to the people who run them. We book them, and we are answerable to you for them, which is a different thing from owning them.
Sixty-five at the moment, across eight regions — and eighteen of those are in Kerala, where we live. None of them is a chain.
We know them. Some we have stayed in ourselves; some we know through the people who run them; some we have sent guests we care about to and then listened very carefully afterwards. Thirty years in this trade is mostly that — a long memory for which places are as good as they say they are. The ones we would not send our own family to are not on the list.
Every photograph of a place you might sleep in is that property's own. We do not put stock photography under the name of a hotel or a boat — if a property has not sent us its pictures, its page says so rather than borrowing somebody else's backwater. The wider landscapes on the destination and journey pages are licensed photographs, and they are there to show you a district rather than a room.
Still wondering
Ask the one we have not answered.
Most of what we are asked is particular to the person asking — a knee that does not like stairs, a child who will not eat chilli, a week that has to include a wedding in Kochi. Those are the useful questions, and they are not on this page.
Or write to us at info@scenicescapesindia.com