Our motorboat owner, Sukumaran, in his late 40s, took a liking to our young bubbly crowd and was kind enough to tell us something about the place. He also stopped the boat, as and when we requested, so we could take pictures of the gigantic houseboats, pretty cottage resorts and a variety of birds like seagulls, cormorants and kingfishers perched on pilings jutting out of the water.

En route our backwater boat ride, the boat owner stopped by at a bird sanctuary on the banks. The ticket to the sanctuary is just Rs 5 per head and though we didn't see many birds, the dense forest inside was breathtaking -- something a city dweller would have rarely seen.