The boatman knocked on the wooden door of our room at five-fifteen in the morning. Karthik did not move. I had set an alarm and forgotten to wake up. I scrambled into the previous day's clothes, splashed water on my face, and ran down the path to the jetty in flip-flops because my actual shoes were too far inside the room.
The canoe was already in the water. A man in a lungi and a half-buttoned shirt was holding a single oar across his knees. He smiled at me with the patience of a man who had been doing 5 am canoe rides for thirty years and was not going to be hurried by a tourist with bedhead.
I almost cancelled this canoe the night before. We had done the houseboat day already. We were tired. The 5 am wake-up call sounded romantic when I booked it from my Bangalore desk three months earlier; in actual practice, at 11 pm after a long dinner, it sounded stupid. Karthik said "we'll see how we feel in the morning." Which is husband-talk for "I am not waking up at five."
So I went alone.
The canoe pushed off from the homestay jetty into a channel maybe four metres wide, not the open lake the big houseboats use. The water was completely still. The first sound I noticed was not a bird. It was the noise of the boatman's oar dipping into the water, then lifting out, then dipping in again. Wood on wet wood. Every three seconds. I started counting them and stopped at thirty because I forgot why I was counting.
It was still dark. He pointed his torch ahead and the beam picked up small things — a water hyacinth, the edge of a sleeping kingfisher on a branch, a rope tied between two coconut trees with a small fishing net hanging in the middle. We did not speak. I did not know his name yet. The whole arrangement was paid for, I had the receipt from the homestay manager, and there was no need for either of us to make conversation.
Twenty minutes in, the sky started doing the colour thing. Not all at once. First a pale grey behind the palm trees on the east bank. Then a yellow-pink that moved slowly down toward the water. The mist that had been sitting on the canal lifted in pieces, like very slow smoke.
We passed a small house with a tiled roof. The kitchen window was open. A woman was lighting a stove. The smell of wood smoke reached us a few seconds later. The boatman lifted his oar to let us drift past silently. The woman did not see us. I do not know why this moved me. It just did.
Around half an hour in, a child of maybe eight came out of a hut wearing a school uniform, with a tiffin in his hand. He walked to the edge of the water, stepped into a smaller canoe tied to a post, untied it himself, and pushed off. He paddled past us with a small wave. The boatman waved back. The boy was going to school. The school was apparently across the water. This was just his commute.
It was at this point that I started crying, very slightly, in a way I think only women on holiday alone in canoes are allowed to cry. Karthik tells me I cry at everything. I think I cry at things that have arranged themselves correctly without my involvement.
The boatman did not seem to notice. He took us through another small canal and pointed to a kingfisher (a real one, on a branch, doing nothing). He said "kingfisher" in a tone that suggested he had said this word to many tourists who needed to be told. I nodded. I did not need to be told. I had already seen it.
We were back at the homestay jetty around 7 am. Karthik was on the verandah with chai and toast, asking how it was. I said, "fine." I have still not really told him what happened in the canoe because I am not sure I have the sentence for it.
I plan honeymoons for a living. Couples come to me wanting Maldives or Bali. Some end up going to Kerala because they cannot stretch the budget. They come back surprised, and the most-mentioned thing is never the houseboat. It's the dawn canoe ride at the small homestay where they stayed. Most homestays in Kumarakom and around Alleppey will arrange one. Some include it in the room rate, some charge five hundred to a thousand rupees extra. Either way, do it. Even if you didn't sleep. Even if the alarm at five-fifteen makes you want to throw the phone across the room.
For the rest of the Kerala stuff: I would recommend Kumarakom over Alleppey. Quieter, smaller, the homestays are family-run. The houseboat one night is enough, not two. Add Munnar for two nights if you have a week, the tea estate stays are worth the four-hour drive. Skip Periyar on a honeymoon, the shared boat ride to see wildlife is not the mood. Skip Fort Kochi too on this trip, it deserves a long weekend of its own later.
The Kerala honeymoon adds up to around sixty to eighty thousand per person from Bangalore with private vehicle, decent homestays, all meals. Most of the Kerala honeymoons I plan come in at that range. It's cheaper than Bali, much closer to home, and the food alone justifies the trip.
What I wish I had known before going: Kerala is not a trip you "do." It's a trip you let happen. The houseboat is fine. The Mughal-style romantic dinner the homestay sets up is fine. The thing you remember is the small wooden canoe at dawn, with a boatman who barely talked, and a sky that changed colour while you watched it from a foot above the water.
If you can wake up for that one morning, you'll have something nobody else's Instagram will show.