Emerald Isle Heritage Villa

The family has owned this house for 175 years and opened it to guests in August 2000. It stands on an island in Kuttanad, the part of Kerala that farms below sea level, fifteen kilometres out of Alleppey. Nine acres of spice and fruit garden, fish ponds and canals, the Manimala river across the front and a thousand acres of paddy behind. You can come in by boat, or by road since the bridge went in.

Teak, and an Ara

The house keeps its original architecture, most of it teak, with carved detail throughout. The rice store survives too: the Ara, the timber room where the harvest was kept. It is a suite now, with the bed raised where the grain used to sit.

There are seven air-conditioned rooms. Three Heritage rooms in the main house, the Granary Mini Suite, two Venice Heritage rooms in a separate wooden building facing the fish ponds, and a cottage with a private plunge pool and a hammock in its own garden. Every bathroom has an open shower and several are open to the sky.

What the day is

Meals are served outside in the garden: Kuttanadan cooking, karimeen pollichathu, avoli fry, appam with egg roast, vegetables from the nine acres. Cycling is free, so is the fishing, so is the toddy tapping and the walk round the garden. In the evening somebody sings country folk songs in the garden.

The boats are the reason to be here. A shikkara goes out along the small canals to a church that has stood 1,400 years, a snake boat, and an ancient temple. It is the backwaters seen from the water without sleeping on a houseboat.

Recognition

Lonely Planet Magazine made it Best Homestay of India in 2013. Outlook Responsible Tourism put it in the top five heritage stays in India in 2025, MakeMyTrip named it Heritage Homestay of India in 2022, and TripAdvisor has it in its Hall of Fame after ten straight years of the Certificate of Excellence.