Alappuzha Coir Weaving Backwater Houseboat Rice Kerala

Alappuzha (Alleppey) district is the centre of Kerala's coir industry — the processing of coconut husk (coco peat and coir fibre) into rope, yarn, mats, and mattress fill that employs over 500,000 workers, predominantly women from the Dheevara fishing community, who spin coir yarn on traditional wooden spinning wheels (charkha) in their homes and sell to nearby retting-spinning cooperative factories. Alappuzha's backwater tourism on the Vembanad Lake is Kerala's premier tourist experience — the kettuvallam (rice barge) houseboat that once transported paddy from the delta to Kochi now carries tourists through a labyrinth of canals, coconut groves, and paddy fields that create Kerala's distinctive landscape. The district's pokkali rice cultivation in coastal paddies flooded by tidal backwater — a traditional saline-tolerant paddy system alternating with prawn farming in the same fields — is one of the world's most sophisticated integrated rice-fish systems.