New green initiatives, including solar-powered boats, aim to make boating on Kerala’s Lake Vembanad more sustainable
Pillai’s boat is moored on Lake Vembanad—India’s largest lake—near the coastal town of Alleppey. It’s a modifiedor traditional, fat-bellied boat with a curved, thatched roof. The boats once hauled rice and spices; now they ferry travelers throughs backwaters—a 560-mile network of scenic canals and lagoons lined with quaint villages, bird sanctuaries, palms, and rice paddies.
But, pollution, unethical fishing practices, and emissions from the idyllic-seeming houseboats threaten the whole region. In the last decade, the lake has seen a 40 percent drop in its fish population, including native black clams, freshwater prawns, andKerala bills itself as “God’s Own Country.
Those backwaters flow in and out of Lake Vembanad, which stretches from Alleppey up to the city of Kochi before emptying into the Laccadive Sea. A small fishing village transformed into the epicenter of the maritime spice trade by 16th-century Portuguese merchants, Kochi is cleaved by islets and waterways and studded with architectural relics of its indigenous Malayalam and colonial Portuguese, Dutch, and British rulers. Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
In Beypore, a seaside village 93 miles north of Kochi, you can still see traditional shipbuilders at work. Teak and are fastened with coir rope and coated with a black resin made of boiled cashew shells. An arched roof of thatched bamboo and coconut husks shades cargo and crew, who used to punt the vessels with long bamboo poles.
“In the beginning, houseboats were not regulated. They generated income, so the government encouraged them,” says Gopinath Parayil, founder of sustainable tourism company
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