Fishing boats flock to village in Kottayam, to serve tourists in water lily-filled polders

Kottayam: For nearly a decade, dozens of large fishing boats have been brought to Kottayam, a district that does not have any sea coast. Originally used for fishing, they are taken to a village for a different purpose: Tourism.In Thiruvarpu, a village that falls under upper Kuttanad, nearly 200 boats are being used by local residents this year to transport tourists to the paddy fields covered with pink water lilies. The region has been a significant tourist attraction since 2017 as hundreds of tourists arrive here during the blooming time every year.Locals, who realised the potential of water lily tourism, started buying fishing boats from fisherfolk a few years ago."We buy boats from Kanyakumari, Colachel and Vizhinjam," said Praveen Prasad, a local resident who owns a boat. "It costs more than Rs 50,000 to bring a boat here. It includes loading and transportation charges," he said. Almost every single house has got boats and some have two to three. Praveen says that the visitors prefer big boats as they are safer. All boats are powered by petrol engines as it is difficult to paddle through the water lily-filled polders.The pink water lilies bloom in two polders in the region, 1,850 acres and 850 acres vast. Farming is done from Oct to March in these paddy fields that are below sea level. The fields are drained using pumps for farming. After harvest, these fields are filled with water again and pink water lilies bloom during May-Sept every year. The place became a tourist attraction in 2017. Until then, locals, who depended solely on paddy cultivation, experienced a dull period during the non-farming season. "The situation has changed now. Earlier, this period was really dull with floods and rain leaving us jobless. Now we make a minimum of Rs 1,000 daily from our boats. We don't have to go to other places in search of jobs," said Praveen, 30.Santhosh A K, another local resident who owns a boat, said that a minimum of Rs 4,000-5,000 could be earned daily during weekends. A trip in these boats which could accommodate 5-6 persons deep into the polders costs around Rs 1,000. "The life of the villagers has prospered ever since the region became a tourist destination," he said.The tourism activities in the region and the stakeholders come under Malarikkal Tourism Society which oversees the operations. Its president Shajimon V K said a collective for the boat operators would be launched soon and it would be called M-BOAT, which stands for Malarikkal Boat Operators Association Thiruvarpu. "Around 120 families benefit from the tourism sector. The main revenue is from boats. Other revenue-generating avenues include renting out spaces for parking the cars of visitors, selling water lilies, etc. A share of the revenue earned by the boat operators will be provided to those who own the paddy fields," he added. He also said that the society would be providing uniform T-shirts with numbers for all the authorised boat operators in the region from next week.