Kasaragod Handloom Saree Salt Pan Paddy Coorg Border Kerala

Kasaragod district at the Kerala-Karnataka border is Kerala's most linguistically diverse district — Kannada, Tulu, Konkani, Beary, and Malayalam are all spoken — and is famous for the Kasaragod saree (GI-tagged) woven on pit looms in the Kanhangad and Kasaragod handloom clusters by Muslim Beary and Hindu Chitrakara weavers producing simple cotton saris with bright colour combinations. The district's coastal belt grows paddy (pokkali) in seasonally saline paddies and has salt pan (uppu panu) workers in the backwater tidal zones. Kasaragod's Bekal Fort — a 17th century coastal Portuguese/Nayak fortress in circular form on a sea promontory — is Kerala's largest fort and a heritage tourism attraction on the north Kerala coast.