Beyond the backwaters

Some memories of my time in Kerala (7 minute read)

Even for someone as prone to sea-sickness as I am, a boat on the Kerala Backwaters causes no concern. In places, the water is so still that I can see every detail of the graceful coconut palms reflected on the water’s unrippled surface. The boat chugs along at a languid pace, navigating the maze of wide and narrow canals. We glide past houses painted red, yellow, pink and powder blue, while purple swamphens stalk across patches of waterlilies, each dainty step barely indenting the leaves. Occasionally, we pass a man in a canoe, or a woman crouched on one of the steps which provide access to the water. Although this area is now one of Kerala’s major tourist attractions, it’s also a place where people live their lives much as they have for many generations.

Images of the backwaters. There's a purple swamphen among the water hyacinth. The man in the yellow shirt in the canoe is picking up litter, while the people in the background of the duck photograph are fishing (image credit: Melanie Newfield)

Kerala is India’s most south-western state, and I visited there in 2014 to teach a course on invasive species management at the Kerala Forest Research Institute. It was part of the same trip as my visit to the Maldives, but I didn’t write about it when I wrote about the Maldives a couple of years ago. So, I thought I’d share some of my memories of visiting Kerala over the next few weeks while I’m very busy with other work.

I’ve never been anywhere else in India, but my impression is that Kerala is very different from the other states. The people speak a distinct language, Malayalam, and it’s religiously diverse with a long history of mutual tolerance. People told me that it had a strong government sector, with education, welfare and healthcare provided at least to some extent. As a result, literacy is high, in excess of 95%, and more children complete primary and secondary school than almost anywhere else in India. It has the lowest rate of deprivation of any Indian state and although I haven’t been able to find formal statistics, I saw few people begging, despite this being prevalent in other parts of India. Kerala has the lowest maternal mortality rate and the highest life expectancy of any Indian state, both by a substantial margin.

This is not to say Kerala is without problems. There are people living in substandard housing whose access to education and healthcare is limited, especially those from disadvantaged groups. These include minority indigenous groups, the disabled and migrant workers. Kerala’s comparative wealth is partly dependent on people who move overseas, especially to the Middle East, for work. Because of the higher educational attainment, many are able to get good jobs which are less exploitative than those available to less skilled workers, but it’s still hard on families. My impression, too, was of a conservative society. One of my hosts recommended a local novel which certainly portrayed the culture as highly repressive for someone raised in a major city such as Mumbai or New Delhi.

More than half Kerala receives more rain per year than Hokitika, the largest town on New Zealand’s wet West Coast. The hills are swathed in luxuriant vegetation, steep, and riven with deep gullies and powerful rivers. Many of the roads are narrow and winding, and it takes a long time to get anywhere except on the main highways which run down the coast. It makes for a stunning landscape, and Kerala is one of the top tourist destinations for Indians travelling in their own country.

In everyday English, we use the term backwater to mean somewhere old-fashioned, backwards or left behind, a place redolent of stagnation. To a geographer, however, the word has a distinctly different meaning. It’s the part of a river which is influenced by the sea. The river is influenced in two ways. Firstly, the flow of water is impeded as it reaches the sea, causing water to back up and sediment to be deposited. Secondly, the water can become brackish as seawater mixes with fresh.

The state of Kerala has 560 kilometres of coastline, and there are many areas of backwater along the coast. The most famous are the backwaters centred on Vembanad Lake, which are part of a massive backwater system fed by six different rivers. The area is one of Kerala’s most important tourist attractions, with the traditional houseboats, constructed of thatch over a wooden hull, converted to luxury accommodation. It’s also important as a habitat for plants and animals, with around 150 species of fish reported from Vembanad Lake and at least that number of birds.

I was taken to see the backwaters by the local family I stayed with for part of my time in Kerala. They rightly thought that I’d enjoy the wildlife, and there was certainly a lot to see. I was surprised by how familiar some of the species were to me. The purple swamphen I mentioned in the first paragraph is a cousin to New Zealand’s pūkeko. The black shag I saw is a cousin to our kawaupaka or little shag. I spotted a pure white heron with a yellow beak which looked strikingly similar to our kōtuku. Sure enough, it turned out to be the same species.

Others were less familiar. I recognised a kingfisher, but it was quite different from ours, with a reddish-brown body and pale blue wings and tail. I was baffled by the large bird with graphic wing markings over a black body. It had the posture of a shag but the build of a heron, and turned out to be an Oriental darter, a relative of shags and cormorants.

Some of Vembanad Lake's birds. Clockwise from top left: white heron, Oriental darter, duck (not sure of species) and black shag. (image credit: Melanie Newfield)

The birds were easiest to see from the boat, but other animals were more easily viewed from land. A row of Indian black turtles sat on the trunk of a fallen coconut palm. One plopped into the water before I could get a good photograph, but the other two sat like statues. I also spotted a monitor lizard and some large skinks with coppery scales which glistened in the sunlight.

Of all the animals, though, I was most taken with the butterflies and moths. One of the attractions in the area was a butterfly garden, filled with flowers and fluttering wings. I knew that some of the flowers were weeds, but that didn’t prevent me delighting in the butterflies which fed on them, including the lovely blue tiger. I was also lucky enough to see a stunning wasp moth, the most brightly coloured moth I’ve ever seen.

Left: Indian black turtles (top) and keeled Indian mabuya (bottom); middle, blue tiger/ Tirumala limniace; right, wasp moth Euchromia polymena (image credit: Melanie Newfield)

There’s a sense of calm which comes from the tranquil water bordered by lush vegetation, and it would be easy to romanticise the backwaters. But I can’t switch off the part of me which looks at invasive species. There are masses of floating water hyacinth, one of the world’s most serious aquatic weeds, and I wonder about the impact it is having. It’s not alone either, there’s at least another half-dozen aquatic invasive weeds in or on the water here. Nutrients from fertiliser runoff and sewage allow the weeds to proliferate. In places, the weed growth is so dense that it accelerates the accumulation of silt and the gradual transformation of open water to land. It also makes fishing more difficult for the people who depend on the backwaters for their food.

Over the previous decades, a number of insects and fungi which damage water hyacinth have been released in the backwaters, but their effect has been limited. They may have slowed the rate of growth, but they haven’t prevented water hyacinth spreading. There’s no easy answer for the forseeable future and control continues to be complicated and expensive. As beautiful as the backwaters are, the water hyacinth reminds me that they are a vulnerable and fragile environment.

Waterlilies and images showing houseboats (image credit: Melanie Newfield)