Kollam Beyond the Backwaters: What the Town Itself Offers

Most people meet Kollam from the deck of a boat. They board the Alappuzha ferry, cross Ashtamudi lake, get off, and go straight to a bus or a train. The town itself gets an hour at most, which is a shame, because Kollam has a working port history that you can still walk through.

Here is the short answer for anyone with a spare day: see Thangassery for the lighthouse and the old European quarter, walk a fish market on the Ashtamudi side early in the morning, and find out whether any cashew unit near town takes visitors. Those three things together tell you what Kollam has been for several hundred years.

Thangassery: the lighthouse and the old quarter

Thangassery is a headland on the sea side of Kollam. It changed hands between Portuguese, Dutch and British control, and the leftovers are still visible: church buildings, a ruined fort wall, cemetery stones, and street names that do not sound like the rest of Kerala.

The lighthouse is the landmark. It is open to visitors on a published schedule that varies, so check the timing on the day rather than turning up on a hunch. The climb is short and the view covers the whole coastline, the breakwater and the fishing harbour.

The beach here is a working shore rather than a resort one. Boats are pulled up on it, nets are laid out on it, and people are repairing things on it. That is the appeal. Swimming is a bad idea in most of it, and you should ask locally before going in anywhere along this coast.

The cashew town

Kollam has been a centre of cashew processing for a long time. Raw nuts arrive, get roasted, shelled, peeled and graded, and leave again. Much of the shelling and peeling is still done by hand, largely by women, in units of very different sizes.

If you want to see this:

• Ask at your hotel or a local contact rather than turning up at a factory gate. Access depends entirely on the individual unit and whether they are mid season.
• Some units are used to visitors, others are not, and it is not a tourist attraction with a ticket counter.
• If you get in, watch how the grading works. The sorting of whole kernels from broken ones is done at speed and by eye.

Even without a factory visit, the trade is visible around town in the godowns, the trucks and the shops selling graded nuts by weight.

Ashtamudi and the fish markets

Ashtamudi lake is the reason Kollam exists where it does. Eight arms of water meeting the sea, with a port at the join.

The fish markets are the best hour of the day here, and the hour is early. Go while the catch is coming in. What you will see:

• Boats unloading directly onto the bank in some spots.
• Karimeen, prawns, mussels and lake fish from Ashtamudi, alongside sea catch from the harbour side.
• Prices settled by argument, quickly.

Bring nothing you mind getting wet. Stand out of the path of anyone carrying a basket. Kerala rewards this kind of looking and eating, and a Saturday in Kozhikode can be built entirely around food.

If you want the water without the standard houseboat, take the public ferry rather than a chartered one. It is a commuter service, it goes where people live, and it costs a fraction of a tour. The same instinct is what stretches three days in Kannur to under five thousand rupees.

Fitting it into a day

• Early morning: fish market and the lake edge.
• Late morning: town, godowns, lunch.
• Afternoon: Thangassery, the old quarter, the fort wall.
• Evening: the lighthouse and the sea front, then the harbour as the boats come back.

Finding out what is on while you are there

Kollam district has a busy calendar of temple festivals, church feasts, boat events on the lake and beach programmes, and almost none of it reaches the places a visitor would look. It travels by poster, by loudspeaker announcement and by word of mouth. If you want an evening with a fixed start and finish instead, Kathakali in Kochi runs to a known length.

EventifyPlus is built for that gap. It is a hyperlocal event discovery service for Kerala, live in production, covering temple festivals, Onam, backwater boat races, Kathakali and Theyyam, and city carnivals. It works in two directions: people find what is on near them, and organisers who otherwise depend on word of mouth get a way to be found.

Kollam rewards a day. Give it one and the ferry stops being the whole story.