AVARA

Kumarakom, Kerala

The garden ends at the water.

A small independent retreat on the Kerala backwaters at Kumarakom. Three villas among the coconut palms, Ayurveda and yoga, and one dining pavilion beside the water.

Plan your stay Explore the villas

Kumarakom

Most of this is landscape.

AVARA sits on a narrow finger of coconut land at the edge of Kumarakom, where Vembanad Lake opens out and the water is wide enough to hold weather. A handful of tiled pavilions stand under the palms, low and spaced apart. Paths connect them.

Location: Kumarakom, Kerala
Water: Vembanad Lake
Stay: Three villa types
Transfers: By arrangement

AVARA from above, on the edge of Vembanad Lake at Kumarakom

The dining pavilion and the pool sit at the water. The villas stand further back, under the palms.

Stay

The villas face different things.

Three kinds of villa. What separates them is what each one opens onto: the garden, the backwater, or a walled garden and pool of your own.

Lake Villa

The deck runs out to the water and stops. The doors fold all the way back. On a still morning the far shore takes a while to appear.

Bedroom · Morning deck · Bath

Garden Villa

Set back under the trees, with a laterite wall around the outdoor shower and the canopy closing over the roof.

Garden · Bedroom · Outdoor shower

Private Pool Villa

Laterite walls on both sides, a pool of your own, and a veranda deep enough to sit out the middle of the day.

Living pavilion · Bedroom · Pool

A day here

Morning at AVARA

The first hours have their own order. Water before anything moves on it, yoga on the lawn, then breakfast on the veranda.

Flat water at first light, a wooden canoe tied alongside a low jetty, the far bank still lost in mist.

A handful of people on mats on the lawn at the water's edge, early, with their backs to the camera.

Sunrise yoga · Lawn

On the grass at the water’s edge, barefoot. By now the first boat is out.

A breakfast table on the veranda: appam, a bowl of stew, kadala, fruit, two cups of tea and a steel pot, with a hand reaching in.

Breakfast · Veranda

Appam, stew, a steel pot of tea. Something is still steaming when it reaches the table.

Ayurveda

It begins with a conversation.

Nothing is chosen from a menu. A consultation comes first: the pulse, a few questions, notes taken by hand. What follows is decided from that.

A practitioner in a timber-framed room taking a guest's pulse across a table, with a notebook, a clay cup and a brass bowl of fresh leaves, and the garden doors open behind them.

The consultation room, with the garden doors open. The brass vessel behind is a dhara pot.

Treatments are traditional Kerala therapies, given by hand with warm oil.

Abhyanga: Warm oil massage, worked in by hand
Shirodhara: A steady stream of warm oil across the forehead
Pizhichil: Warm oil poured slowly over the body

Explore Ayurveda

A therapist working warm oil into a guest's shoulders on a dark timber treatment table, with oil bottles, a brass bowl of leaves and a hanging dhara pot, open to the garden.

Experiences

The water leads somewhere.

What there is to do here begins at the water or at the gate. A boat into the canals, a walk through the village, and an afternoon learning how coir rope is made.

A wooden canoe being poled along a narrow canal between banana and coconut palms, carrying two guests and a boatman, with a tiled house on the bank. — Private Backwater Journey
The canal narrows, the palms close over the top of it, and someone poles you through at walking pace.

Two guests walking a village path with a host in a white mundu, past tiled houses, a bicycle, laundry on a line and a canal.

Village Walk

A path behind the houses, wide enough for a bicycle. You walk it with someone who lives here. It is a working village, not a view.

A woman spinning coir fibre into rope on a wooden frame under a shelter, with baskets and coconut husks around her and a guest sitting alongside.

Coir Craft

Coconut husk, soaked and beaten until it comes apart, then spun into rope by hand. You sit down and try it.

Explore experiences

Dining

Dinner starts in the afternoon.

Tea goes out to the water when the light drops. By then the kitchen has been working for a while. Dinner is Kerala food, cooked in one kitchen and served in one pavilion, and occasionally somewhere else on the property.

Two guests in low timber chairs on a deck at the water's edge at sunset, with a teapot and a plate on a small table between them.

Sunset tea · By the water

Chairs turned toward the water, a pot of tea, and something fried to go with it.

A cook tilting a small pan over a gas flame, the batter spreading into a lacy-edged appam, with steel vessels, stacked plates and curry leaves alongside.

Before dinner · The kitchen

A ladle of batter, a turn of the pan, and the edge goes lacy. Appam, one at a time.

Two guests at a timber table under the tiled dining pavilion at dusk, an oil lamp between them, the lake and far shore beyond. — The dining pavilion, open to the lake, with a lamp on every table once it gets dark. Dinner is occasionally laid outside on the grass instead.

Explore dining

Some days, the rain becomes the plan.

The roofs are loud in it. Lanterns come on early, the paths shine, and the far shore disappears for a while. Nothing about the day has to change.

Heavy rain falling between two tiled villas, lanterns lit along a wet stone path running down to the grey lake, one person walking under an umbrella. — Rain between the villas. The lamps are already lit, and the doors are still open.

Looking out from inside a villa between curtains and timber columns: two guests in loungers on the deck with a pot of tea, the still lake and far shore beyond. — The deck of a Lake Villa, doors folded back. Tea came out earlier. The boat is the only thing that has moved since.

Night

The water goes dark before anything else does.

Lamps come on along the paths, and from across the water the villas start to show. The far shore goes first. After that you find your way by lantern.

The villa range seen from across the water at blue hour, warm light in the windows and under the eaves, lanterns along a jetty, the lights reflected in the dark lake. — After dark *· Across the water*
The roofs go first. What is left is the light coming out from under them, and the same light lying on the water.

Lanterns · Between the villas

Stone paths, a lantern at each turn, and the pavilion still open at the end of them.

A lamplit room at night with the doors left open to the deck, the laterite wall warm behind the bed and the pale lake just visible outside. — Lamps left on, the doors still open to the deck. Outside, the lake has gone the same colour as the sky.

Plan your stay

Come and see the rest of it.

Reservations here are by enquiry. Tell us when you would like to come and which villa suits you, and we will reply with availability and the next steps.

The arrival pavilion. The lake is straight through it.

When: Arrival and departure
Which villa: Garden, Lake or Private Pool
Anything else: Ayurveda, a backwater journey, a village walk, coir craft, an airport transfer

Transfers are arranged for you. Everything else we will work out together.

Plan your stay Getting here