The boat cuts its engine about forty seconds before we reach the jetty, and that's usually when it happens. The guest stops talking mid-sentence. You can...

A man stood on my veranda last week, coffee going cold in his hand, and asked straight out: "So are we anywhere near the beach resorts?" I told him the...

The rain started around two this afternoon and hasn't stopped since. On a tin roof, that's not weather, it's a kind of music, steady at first, then...

A guest asked our boatman to circle the island twice before landing. Not because he was nervous. He just wanted to take it in slowly, he said, from the...

I walked down to the jetty just now, around six, because the light does something to the water at that hour that I still can't describe properly after all...

There's no road to this island. That's the inconvenient part. You park near the jetty, we load your bags into a vallam, and six minutes later you step...

The walk down to the jetty takes about four minutes if I don't stop to talk. I usually stop. There's always someone at the bend near the paddy field, or a...

The mist sits low on Vembanad most mornings until about seven. Before that you hear things more than see them. A diesel engine coughing somewhere past the...

Mustard seeds crackling in coconut oil. That's the first thing I smell every morning, before coffee, before the boats start. It drifts up from the...

At 5:40 in the morning the lake is a sheet of grey glass and the mist sits on it like it's been left there overnight to dry. Then the first diesel engine...