After flying from San Francisco to Chennai then across India to Kochi, followed by an uneventful but cramped bus ride an hour or so down the coast, I cross the threshold into Kumarakom Lake Resort feeling devout relief. Water has ways of distracting even the most harried travelers. Maybe that’s why it is so often employed in the healing arts, used to awaken within our bodies a dormant harmony.
“Namaste.” Two wide-eyed, sari-clad women emerge from within the palm ringed entrance. They bow to bless my arrival.
I surrender my bags to receive the full blessing – sandal paste between the eyes, cold towel, and a tumbler of coconut water. What more could a traveler want after nearly 30 hours en route to this backwater destination? I close my eyes and press the towel against my cheeks. When I open them, I look into the silent pool fronting the registration desk that hints at the magic of Vembanad Lake.
Gone are the bustling street vendors hawking mass produced gods and colorful purses that I shimmied past in Chennai. Even the brightly painted walls, Christian churches, and meandering streets that invited curiosity and conversation throughout Kochi could not compete with the languid stillness that permeates every inch of the Kumarakom province. This place relies on natural elements – dark woods, uneven stones, manicured greenery – to elevate the senses.
I think to myself, if for one moment I could taste pure beauty, really bite into it and swallow it whole, it would taste like this place. This damp, hot, liquid green ancient place.
It sounds cliché but water is life, which is why when I arrive at the beautiful Kumarakom Lake Resort in the western state of Kerala, the feeling that engulfs me as I marvel at the hand-carved rafters and traditional architecture is tranquility. Beauty, though still, is not sedate. Walking into another world where water binds past, present, and future, I swoon against a wood and stone tapestry of tradition tugging me towards wellness that kindles an innate wonder. A divine mystery pulses just beneath the surface. Is it desire that bristles through me? Brass oil lamps shaped like lotus flowers dangle over pools of water reflecting the mingling of bright green grass and clear blue sky. When water is present, desire finds a way to take shape: both a desire for wholeness and stillness that enlivens and refreshes to the point of electricity.
I feel kinetic as I wander from one stone path to another, over tiny canals that snake between bungalows to create the kind of place that invites movement and solitude and, for the most part, rewards both.
To understand the resort, you must understand the lake itself and the biodiverse region through which it cuts. The prodigious Vembanad Lake sits a few miles inland from the Arabian Sea, the bottom end of a hookah pipe shaped waterway that extends up, into, and throughout the Kochi region. The water, so vast that the other side remains a mystery, cuts through land that thrives from this fecund mixture: home to a renowned bird sanctuary, various plant species, and popular two-story houseboats the length of a city bus that harbor multi-generations of vacationing families from all over India. Arundhati Roy conjured this lake’s presence in The God of Small Things. Places like this are indeed where legends are born.
One gets the sense that drifting across the lake will take you to worlds undiscovered and dimensions unknown; a fairy tale sort of place where magic lingers.
The resort also happens to be a sought after retreat for Ayurvedic treatments. Rightly so. Where else could a touch transport you so thoroughly, heal you so completely? Many beautiful places exist in the India. What drives people to Kumarakom is not just the beauty, it’s the discovery. Its compelling divinity comes from anticipation sparked because of depths yet to be examined.
Lily pads cluster around the sprawling houseboat rocking together against the shore; a voyaging dream meant for transport and relaxation. As I reach for the hand that pulls me onto the boat across another portal, it is I who bows this time – a reverent guest. In Kolkata, they may have their time pass but floating across Vembanad Lake staring out the port side of a houseboat, I resist time altogether to inhabit a watery space undefined by seconds, made real only by breath. To call it scenic fails to honor the activity swirling beneath the bobbing lotus flowers, until that moment when I peer beyond the edge of the boat, past reality, and encounter in one abridged moment, the absolute peace that lay at the center of the universe.
