Purity at Lake Vembanad

Lake Vembanad is where Kerala's houseboats go, and in 2003 someone built an Indo-Italianate villa on its western shore, at Muhamma: white stucco and red terracotta, right at the water's edge. Cochin is about 70 kilometres away by road, and the last five minutes are by boat, from a jetty on the mainland. Inside are fourteen rooms and suites, each with a terrace or a verandah over the lake or the garden, and the hotel's contemporary Indian art keeps company with antique sculpture and old furniture. Two outdoor pools, one of them an infinity pool, run along the waterfront beside the Purity Kitchen, which cooks from local flavours and serves dinner from eight until eleven, by which time the lake has gone dark behind the tables.

Recommended for couples who would sooner see the backwaters at the speed of a paddle than from a houseboat's deck, and for families whose children are happy on the water without a kids' club: the hotel suggests its four Vembanad Suites for families, and babysitting can be arranged. The spa's Ayurveda menu was developed with Kama, and six of the suites can take a spa bed. The kitchen gives hour-long demonstrations of Kerala cooking, for anyone who wants to know what went into lunch. Boat trips go out onto the open lake, and Kumarakom's bird sanctuary is about nine kilometres across it by water; Marari Beach, for the sea, is a drive of about eight. The evening canoe ride leaves the lake altogether, for the narrow canals that the houseboats cannot follow.