Express News Service
First Published : 09 Sep 2009 11:52:00 PM IST
Last Updated : 09 Sep 2009 02:44:45 PM IST
KOCHI: Giving a boost to the Kumbalangi Integrated Tourism
Village (KITV) project, its workmanship will be on display at the Calling India event that will take place in Los Angeles from September 18 to 21.
“We will showcase a lot of handicrafts made by our artisans at the event. We will carry an audio-visual presentation and brochures to take bookings from tourists for homestays if there are any enquiries,’’ said Shaji Kuruppasseri, secretary of the tourism project who will be going to LA.
He said that they would carry handicraft items made from coconut shell, coconut fibre and wood. “We have made miniature versions of Chinese nets and country boats in wood. Some of the other items include flower vases, wine bottles, spoons and spatulas and jewellery boxes made out of coconut shell. Foreigners are fascinated by jewellery from coconut products.
So we will carry a few of those items too,’’ he said. Two villages in Kerala, which are under the United Nations Development Programme, will be represented at the event. One is Kumbalangi and the other is Aranmula.
“This is the first time that Kumbalangi is getting exposure in the international arena. We are planning to make the most of it,’’ Shaji said.
Kumbalangi panchayat, which has put forth the proposal to integrate tourism with the livelihood of villagers, has been a successful experiment as far as villagers are concerned as there is no shortage of tourists. “But we need to market it to sustain the flow of tourists,’’ he said.
Kumbalangi Integrated Tourism Village project focuses on transforming the tiny island on the outskirts of Kochi to a model fishing village and tourism spot.
The village is ringed by Chinese nets, mangroves and homestays run by villagers themselves. There is no external monitoring body and it is the panchayat that takes all the decisions.
Under the Kumbalangi project, Kalagramam, an artists’ village has been set up to showcase traditional fishing equipment and handicrafts of the region.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Kerala is third best for Asian holiday
Ashraf Padanna
Thiruvananthapuram: A global vote by readers of smarttravelasia.com has placed Kerala as the third best Asian holiday destination for the third consecutive year.
Bali in Indonesia stands first followed by Maldives, which shares the second slot with last year’s runner-up Phuket in Thailand.
Kerala is followed by Hong Kong (4th), Bangkok and Hoi An (5th), Boracay, Goa and Langkawi (6th), Chiang Mai and Palawan (7th), Angkor, Shanghai and Tokyo (8th), Dubai and Koh Samui (9th) and Penang and Rajasthan (10th).
This was revealed in the 2009 Best in Travel Poll by Smart Travel Asia – the region’s only dedicated online travel magazine which puts the spotlight on ‘aspirational” brands and travel trends.
Voters polled in 12 categories including Asia’s best business hotels, luxury resorts, spas, destinations, business cities, shopping spots, and the world’s best airlines and airports.
Describing Kerala as a favourite of the get-away-from-it-all crowd, the magazine says Kerala is known for its verdant rice paddy fields, cool mountains clad in mist-wreathed tea estates, beaches, and welcoming, literate, head-nodding population.
“After the chaos of Indian airports and the bedlam on the roads, Kerala is as a nourishing oasis of green,” said one voter.
“This democratic online poll offers unique insights into brand perceptions and revealed that Kerala is a dominant holiday brand for travelers,” said Kerala Tourism secretary Dr Venu V.
“Kerala has demonstrated that as a destination it has the integrity and authenticity to attract note only votes but also visitors”.
Last year, there was 16.11% increase in foreign tourist arrivals in Kerala while 14% more domestic holidaymakers chose Kerala compared to the previous year.
“This season is also looking like is another promising year with the domestic season showing a hike in numbers. The winter season, which is the main tourist season, is also looking good”.
The poll was conducted through May-July this year followed by tracking and elimination of inarticulate and orchestrated “block” votes, and attempts to “stuff the ballot box”, before the release of the poll results last week.
Thiruvananthapuram: A global vote by readers of smarttravelasia.com has placed Kerala as the third best Asian holiday destination for the third consecutive year.
Bali in Indonesia stands first followed by Maldives, which shares the second slot with last year’s runner-up Phuket in Thailand.
Kerala is followed by Hong Kong (4th), Bangkok and Hoi An (5th), Boracay, Goa and Langkawi (6th), Chiang Mai and Palawan (7th), Angkor, Shanghai and Tokyo (8th), Dubai and Koh Samui (9th) and Penang and Rajasthan (10th).
This was revealed in the 2009 Best in Travel Poll by Smart Travel Asia – the region’s only dedicated online travel magazine which puts the spotlight on ‘aspirational” brands and travel trends.
Voters polled in 12 categories including Asia’s best business hotels, luxury resorts, spas, destinations, business cities, shopping spots, and the world’s best airlines and airports.
Describing Kerala as a favourite of the get-away-from-it-all crowd, the magazine says Kerala is known for its verdant rice paddy fields, cool mountains clad in mist-wreathed tea estates, beaches, and welcoming, literate, head-nodding population.
“After the chaos of Indian airports and the bedlam on the roads, Kerala is as a nourishing oasis of green,” said one voter.
“This democratic online poll offers unique insights into brand perceptions and revealed that Kerala is a dominant holiday brand for travelers,” said Kerala Tourism secretary Dr Venu V.
“Kerala has demonstrated that as a destination it has the integrity and authenticity to attract note only votes but also visitors”.
Last year, there was 16.11% increase in foreign tourist arrivals in Kerala while 14% more domestic holidaymakers chose Kerala compared to the previous year.
“This season is also looking like is another promising year with the domestic season showing a hike in numbers. The winter season, which is the main tourist season, is also looking good”.
The poll was conducted through May-July this year followed by tracking and elimination of inarticulate and orchestrated “block” votes, and attempts to “stuff the ballot box”, before the release of the poll results last week.
Monday, September 7, 2009
State Pulse Kerala: Kerala's backwaters carry modern-day brunt
"God's own country is only an advertisement," declares Cherian saar, a retired teacher in Champakulam, Alappuzha district, Kerala, as he gazes at the Pamba river flowing placidly by. All is not well with the trope of the famed Kerala wetlands, adopted by Kerala tourism as its flagship product. Kuttanad, covering four districts, the former rice bowl of Kerala, is sinking under the weight of its contradictions. Even as it pursues its dreams of becoming a tourist haven, there is no proper working definition of this intricate ecosystem's boundaries.
Occasionally a voice or two is heard about them but no one really seems to care. The world outside Kuttanad has made desultory interventions. Three of its large lagoons, Vembanad-Kol, Ashtamudi and Shasthanamkota, have been declared Ramsar sites, wetlands of environmental significance. But in practical terms this has not meant much. Forces hell bent on destroying this fragile eco-system have the upper hand. Engineers and contractors have done the most damage, cheered on by local residents looking for a shortcut to modernity. In the 1970s the prosperous Kuttanad farmer, partaking of the myth of unrestrained progress, jumped into the brave new world of increased productivity. Two crops a year, chemical fertilisers and toxic pesticides were the corrosive foundations of the affluence that never came.
Back then engineers devised answers to problems with more certitude than they do today. Till then the rice bowl, which lies below sea-level, could have only one crop because in the summer months that followed the harvest, saline water from the sea would invade the estuarine network. This was seen as a problem that obstructed optimum productivity of the land. Hence, in 1976 a barrage was built at Thanneermukkom near Vaikom that divided an integral water body into the lower and upper estuarine segments, the former still having its salted months while the latter was deprived of it.
The upper riparian farmer enthusiastically embraced a two-crop regime and pumped in the prescribed quantum of chemical inputs into their fields, and flushed these toxic contaminants into the river system. According to the department of agriculture, Kuttanad uses twice the amount of pesticides per tonne of rice than the rest of the state. With more gusto than good sense, the engineers then built a spillway at Thoatappalli near Allapuzha to regulate water levels and prevent floods. According to Jacob Thomas of St Berchman's College, Changanacherry, who is involved with the institution's community extension programme in Kuttanad, these two engineering interventions had damaging consequences.
Two important ecological, and, economic functions now depended on the whim of government officials. The natural flushing system provided by the floods and the seasonal saline cycle important for the region's agriculture, combined with the toxic effluvium being discharged from the fields, undermined the rice, coconut and fishing economy of the region. The three most lucrative activities of the region have more or less declined. By contrast the economy of the brackish lower riparian still has a reasonably prosperous fish and coconut-based economy.
But engineers are not the only people to blame. The decline in farm incomes and increase in education led to changes in Kuttanad's employment profile. More people took to the service sector, either locally or in nearby towns, or migrated abroad and remitted incomes, bringing down the river-dependence of the economically stronger segments. Consequently, investments on the upkeep of the river system, crucial to the former agrarian economy, went down. Poorer sections who still depend on the ecosystem suffered the most.
Today the surface is still glossy, but there are things the tourists cannot see and do not want to see.
Canals away from the main waterways are blocked with hyacinth and those who cling to the old occupations have a tough time of it. Jojo the "egg man" still plies a profitable trade, buying eggs from riverside residents in a barter arrangement that goes far back. In return they take petty household goods from him. The market he can access could have been much larger but he cannot navigate far up the clogged canals.
Clogging and pollution have also made the canals useless for many other purposes. Rosamma Antony, 76, who lives by a choking canal says that piped drinking water has become available only since the past year. Before that, the degraded canal water was used for bathing, washing and drinking after boiling. In happier times, before piped water came, people maintained kitchen ponds and wells for drinking water: these have deteriorated from neglect.
Changing lifestyles have played their part. Consumption patterns have altered and people throw plastics and non-biodegradable waste into the water. The solid waste dumped into the water 15 years ago was organic and therefore did not have the same impact. Another serious problem is the change in the fluvial rhythm. Earlier the river bed was regularly dredged and used as fertiliser or as earthwork for bunds in paddy fields. But with paddy and coconut in decline, the beds are not dredged systematically. The raised river bed has affected flow. With two monsoons a year adding about 3,000mm annually, 38 rivers generously flowing through it, and over 1,500 km of waterways afforded by the lagoon, lakes, estuary, rivers and canals, water that does not flow properly is a serious problem.
A reticulate of ill-conceived roads crisscross and strangulate the waterways. These causeways, including allegedly sophisticated ones like the tarred Allapuzha-Changanacherry road, under constant World Bank-Asian Development Bank funded repair, have no culverts. In drylands this is bad enough. In a wetland below sea-level this is lethal. The financial cost of maintaining the busy A-C road, let alone its ecological cost, seems not to worry its beneficiaries, least of all the contractors, bureaucrats and politicians.
What remains - the famed houseboats, the boat races, the idyllic waters, the emerald green paddy fields, the carelessly strewn banana plants - attract tourists who laze on boat decks and survey the tranquil rural scenes. But the fundamental problem still remains to be grasped - that life here is not meant to be lived as it is done in other places. "Gods own country" is going to the dogs.
Occasionally a voice or two is heard about them but no one really seems to care. The world outside Kuttanad has made desultory interventions. Three of its large lagoons, Vembanad-Kol, Ashtamudi and Shasthanamkota, have been declared Ramsar sites, wetlands of environmental significance. But in practical terms this has not meant much. Forces hell bent on destroying this fragile eco-system have the upper hand. Engineers and contractors have done the most damage, cheered on by local residents looking for a shortcut to modernity. In the 1970s the prosperous Kuttanad farmer, partaking of the myth of unrestrained progress, jumped into the brave new world of increased productivity. Two crops a year, chemical fertilisers and toxic pesticides were the corrosive foundations of the affluence that never came.
Back then engineers devised answers to problems with more certitude than they do today. Till then the rice bowl, which lies below sea-level, could have only one crop because in the summer months that followed the harvest, saline water from the sea would invade the estuarine network. This was seen as a problem that obstructed optimum productivity of the land. Hence, in 1976 a barrage was built at Thanneermukkom near Vaikom that divided an integral water body into the lower and upper estuarine segments, the former still having its salted months while the latter was deprived of it.
The upper riparian farmer enthusiastically embraced a two-crop regime and pumped in the prescribed quantum of chemical inputs into their fields, and flushed these toxic contaminants into the river system. According to the department of agriculture, Kuttanad uses twice the amount of pesticides per tonne of rice than the rest of the state. With more gusto than good sense, the engineers then built a spillway at Thoatappalli near Allapuzha to regulate water levels and prevent floods. According to Jacob Thomas of St Berchman's College, Changanacherry, who is involved with the institution's community extension programme in Kuttanad, these two engineering interventions had damaging consequences.
Two important ecological, and, economic functions now depended on the whim of government officials. The natural flushing system provided by the floods and the seasonal saline cycle important for the region's agriculture, combined with the toxic effluvium being discharged from the fields, undermined the rice, coconut and fishing economy of the region. The three most lucrative activities of the region have more or less declined. By contrast the economy of the brackish lower riparian still has a reasonably prosperous fish and coconut-based economy.
But engineers are not the only people to blame. The decline in farm incomes and increase in education led to changes in Kuttanad's employment profile. More people took to the service sector, either locally or in nearby towns, or migrated abroad and remitted incomes, bringing down the river-dependence of the economically stronger segments. Consequently, investments on the upkeep of the river system, crucial to the former agrarian economy, went down. Poorer sections who still depend on the ecosystem suffered the most.
Today the surface is still glossy, but there are things the tourists cannot see and do not want to see.
Canals away from the main waterways are blocked with hyacinth and those who cling to the old occupations have a tough time of it. Jojo the "egg man" still plies a profitable trade, buying eggs from riverside residents in a barter arrangement that goes far back. In return they take petty household goods from him. The market he can access could have been much larger but he cannot navigate far up the clogged canals.
Clogging and pollution have also made the canals useless for many other purposes. Rosamma Antony, 76, who lives by a choking canal says that piped drinking water has become available only since the past year. Before that, the degraded canal water was used for bathing, washing and drinking after boiling. In happier times, before piped water came, people maintained kitchen ponds and wells for drinking water: these have deteriorated from neglect.
Changing lifestyles have played their part. Consumption patterns have altered and people throw plastics and non-biodegradable waste into the water. The solid waste dumped into the water 15 years ago was organic and therefore did not have the same impact. Another serious problem is the change in the fluvial rhythm. Earlier the river bed was regularly dredged and used as fertiliser or as earthwork for bunds in paddy fields. But with paddy and coconut in decline, the beds are not dredged systematically. The raised river bed has affected flow. With two monsoons a year adding about 3,000mm annually, 38 rivers generously flowing through it, and over 1,500 km of waterways afforded by the lagoon, lakes, estuary, rivers and canals, water that does not flow properly is a serious problem.
A reticulate of ill-conceived roads crisscross and strangulate the waterways. These causeways, including allegedly sophisticated ones like the tarred Allapuzha-Changanacherry road, under constant World Bank-Asian Development Bank funded repair, have no culverts. In drylands this is bad enough. In a wetland below sea-level this is lethal. The financial cost of maintaining the busy A-C road, let alone its ecological cost, seems not to worry its beneficiaries, least of all the contractors, bureaucrats and politicians.
What remains - the famed houseboats, the boat races, the idyllic waters, the emerald green paddy fields, the carelessly strewn banana plants - attract tourists who laze on boat decks and survey the tranquil rural scenes. But the fundamental problem still remains to be grasped - that life here is not meant to be lived as it is done in other places. "Gods own country" is going to the dogs.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Brand Onam to help in Kerala’s tourism sector growth
Wednesday, September 02, 2009, 10:00 Hrs [IST]
By HBI Staff | Mumbai
Onam, the traditional festival of Malayalis, is working wonders for Kerala’s tourism industry. With more domestic and foreign tourists arriving to have a taste of the state’s reputed hospitality sector, the industry is expecting a fast recovery in the coming months.
According to a report in Express Buzz, the industry, which has successfully tapped the potential of rain tourism, is now exploring the possibilities of festival tourism. Many hotels in Kochi have come up with various packages to showcase Kerala’s own Onam.
Many hotels in the city have come up with special attractive packages to tap the lush season. Ajith Kumar, Manager, Corporate Affairs, Taj Hotels, said, “The industry is showing some signs of recovery. Even though it is too early to predict, we are expecting a good season ahead.”
Erin Louis, General Manager, Casino Hotel, said, “We are preparing a special Onam feast, which includes the best of Kerala’s traditional delicacies. The feast includes 19 items.”
By HBI Staff | Mumbai
Onam, the traditional festival of Malayalis, is working wonders for Kerala’s tourism industry. With more domestic and foreign tourists arriving to have a taste of the state’s reputed hospitality sector, the industry is expecting a fast recovery in the coming months.
According to a report in Express Buzz, the industry, which has successfully tapped the potential of rain tourism, is now exploring the possibilities of festival tourism. Many hotels in Kochi have come up with various packages to showcase Kerala’s own Onam.
Many hotels in the city have come up with special attractive packages to tap the lush season. Ajith Kumar, Manager, Corporate Affairs, Taj Hotels, said, “The industry is showing some signs of recovery. Even though it is too early to predict, we are expecting a good season ahead.”
Erin Louis, General Manager, Casino Hotel, said, “We are preparing a special Onam feast, which includes the best of Kerala’s traditional delicacies. The feast includes 19 items.”
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