Kumarakom

Kumarakom is a scatter of islands and paddy bunds on the eastern shore of Vembanad, and it owes its shape to a nineteenth-century Englishman, Alfred George Baker, who reclaimed marsh here for a rubber and coconut estate. The rubber went; the trees he left became a heronry, and fourteen acres of it are now the Kumarakom Bird Sanctuary, where darters dry their wings on dead branches, night herons roost in the mangrove apple, and from November to February teal, garganey and waders arrive from the north. Walk the sanctuary boardwalk at first light, when mist still lies on the lake and the only sound is a canoe pole knocking against a hull.

The village next door, Aymanam, is the Ayemenem of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, and it looks much as described: a church, a river, rubber trees, a house with a red-brick porch. Kumarakom does comfort better than anywhere else in Kerala, with old tharavad houses moved plank by plank onto resort lawns and Ayurveda practised seriously, particularly in the monsoon month of Karkidakam when Malayalis themselves take treatment. A shikara runs out to Pathiramanal, a small wooded island in the middle of the lake reachable only by water.

Sunset over Vembanad is the day's event: the lake turns pewter and the dip nets go up in silhouette.