Kerala backwaters - houseboat in Allepey or Kumarakom vs. canoe

You can find Canoe tours in Alleppey . Canoes are the smaller boats and goes through smaller canals and channels. So you have more chances of seeing the actual life.

The more expensive option of a bigger houseboat cannot go through all the narrower channels.

So you can look for a "Canoe tour" to get similar experience. Alleppey is a better place to do this. But you still have options of doing the same in Kumarakom, Vaikom or even in the backwaters near Kochi.

We enjoyed the smaller boat tours more than the big rice barge tours. As said above the smaller boats can go down canals that the bigger boats cannot fit in. We saw far more daily life and amazingly interesting villages poised on the edge of the canal. Plus we asked our boatman to stop occasionally so we could get out and walk around and even chat with some of the locals. Later we booked a bigger rice barge, just for the experience and in comparison, enjoyed the smaller boat much more.

Although we thoroughly enjoyed the canoe tours from Alleppey, if you plan to go to Kollam, we found the canoe tour around Munroe Island was our favorite.

Thank you @thrive and @trablogger, that's really helpful! I think a canoe / kayaking tour sounds more like what I'm after.

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