The Hindu Business Line : Alert independent traveller's destination

TWO events last week turned the spotlight once more on what Kerala is best known for at this time of the year - travel and tourism. As the tourism season peaks, the State is unfurling its choicest charms to woo increasingly sophisticated international travellers, some of whom are so enamoured by Kerala's charms that they end up doing fairly exotic and atypical acts.

Take the case of 37-year-old Englishwoman Ms Clair and 45-year-old Dutchman Mr Arnold who decided to get married in Kerala - and how! They chose to tie the knot on a bedecked barge on the Chaliyar river, near Kadavu Resorts in Kozhikode.

The rituals were conducted in a makeshift "mandapam" on the barge, to the accompaniment of the traditional "panchavadyam" and "kottum kuravayum". Nearly 140 guests had flown in from different parts of the world, including the UK, the US, South Africa, Sweden and Australia, to witness the wedding ceremony, which lasted nearly three hours. "We are happy to get married in typical Kerala manner. It is different and interesting," Mr Arnold, the groom, told The Hindu.

That is the sort of international guest that Kerala has managed to woo, as was reiterated in the second tourism-related event of the week. Though much less dramatic than the Anglo-Dutch wedding, the national seminar on issues and trends in eco-tourism in India organised by All-India Tourism Teachers' Association at Kerala Institute of Tourism and Travel Studies focused on the "alert independent traveller".

As Mr E.K. Bharat Bhushan, Principal Secretary, Tourism, elaborated, unlike the more common conventional "sun, sand and surf traveller", the alert independent traveller moves around for experience and has a mind of his own.

For such a person, Kerala offers a dazzling variety of authentic social, cultural and political experiences, not to mention the geographical wonders of a land characterised by lush greenery, undulating hills, quiet beaches and the unique backwaters. As Mr Chris Moss reported in The Guardian a couple of months ago, "This rich masala of ideologies, fashions and native character means our experience of Kerala might be rather more than a week of fish curries and sunbathing. As a branding exercise, Kerala ranks with Bollywood and Bangalore, and there's no doubting the soft adventure appeal of the fertile coastal region when compared with other, more clamorous corners of this vast nation. But Kerala is built on coming and going, trading and touring and the current trends - whether package tourism, boutique hotels or massage-and-meat-free health sojourns - will no doubt be absorbed into the Keralan world-view with time."

It is that world-view that, over the ages, has attracted travellers from across the world. And they have, in turn, actually helped mould the Kerala world-view. Malayalees themselves may regard the majority of their kind as fairly insular, with an outlook decidedly far from cosmopolitan, but the outside world remains fascinated with the `lunatic asylum of castes', as Swamy Vivekananda labelled Kerala at the end of the 19th century.

Nonetheless, as Mr Moss writes, "There may still be a kind of madness to the mix here, but there's nothing like variety for encouraging neighbourliness and understanding - from the beaches to the backwaters, Kerala offers strict Hinduism, genteel hedonism and everything in between."

That is reason enough for a great deal of good cheer in the State's travel and hospitality industries. By continuing to focus on the alert independent traveller, Kerala can hope to remain the flavour of the month all year around, which would be a rather rare achievement.

The writer can be contacted at kgkumar@gmail.com