Stories

Plastic litters Kerala’s backwaters. Tourist boats create a lot of it. Water bottles, food packaging, disposable plates. Hundreds of boats operate daily. The waste adds up fast. Some operators are changing this. Spice Routes runs their luxury houseboats differently. Less … Read More

Most Alleppey houseboat trips start the same way. You arrive at a jetty packed with tourists. Dozens of boats lined up. Crowds waiting to board. Vendors selling things. Chaos before you’ve even started. Spice Routes doesn’t board from the main … Read More

Pre-wedding shoots have become standard practice. Couples book photographers, pick locations, spend a day getting pictures. The struggle is finding somewhere that doesn’t look like fifty other couples’ photos. Alleppey’s backwaters solve this. Water, wooden boats, coconut palms, villages. Book … Read More

Spend two or three days at the Biennale and you’ll walk kilometers. Between venues, through installations, past wall texts, into artist talks. Your brain gets full trying to make sense of it all. By the time you’ve hit the major … Read More

Spend a full day at the Biennale and you’ll walk several kilometers between venues. Fort Kochi’s lanes, multiple installations, wall texts, maybe an artist talk or two. By late afternoon, your brain has absorbed about as much contemporary art as … Read More

The sixth Kochi Muziris Biennale opens December 12 and runs through March 31, 2025. Nikhil Chopra curated this edition with HH Art Spaces. There are 66 artist projects from over 25 countries showing across Fort Kochi. Most people don’t realise … Read More

The backwaters look different every few hours. Light changes. Water changes. The whole atmosphere shifts. If you care about getting good photos from your houseboat trip, timing matters more than equipment. Here’s when to have your camera ready and what … Read More

People come back from backwater trips talking about how calm they felt. How thoughts slowed down. How stress that seemed permanent just lifted. This isn’t placebo effect or vacation glow talking. Something specific happens when you spend time on slow … Read More

The question comes up constantly when people book backwater trips. One night or two? Day cruise or overnight? How much time do you actually need? The answer depends less on some standard recommendation and more on what you’re after. What … Read More

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale opened December 12 and runs through March 31. This is the sixth edition. Nikhil Chopra curated it with HH Art Spaces. There are 66 artist projects from over 25 countries, shown in Fort Kochi’s old warehouses, colonial-era … Read More