A kettuvallam from Kerala floats on hope in Sri Lanka

Up for sale since the tourism economy collapsed, it’s anchored at the Gregory lake in Nuwara Eliya

When the sky over Sri Lanka turned pleasant after three decades of civil war, two Keralites reached Colombo with the idea of taking the kettuvallam (houseboat), Kerala Tourism’s mascot, to tourists to the island nation. Sri Lanka can be said to bear a similarity to Kerala in its tropical climate, palm-fringed beaches, diverse landscapes and historical sites. As Sri Lanka rode high on tourism, the duo — Ernakulam native Jaison Panikulangara and Kozhikode hotelier K.T. Joseph — shipped a kettuvallam crafted in Alappuzha, the cradle India’s houseboat industry, to Colombo in 2013.

Sri Lanka had then emerged as a top tourist destination in Asia. Houseboats offer tourists a luxurious ride on serene lakes and this was arguably the first to be introduced there. But after five years of successful operation, the kettuvallam is up for sale as Sri Lanka grapples with its worst economic downturn since its Independence.

“I was in Colombo in connection with dam maintenance work even before the guns fell silent in Sri Lanka. But soon after the end of the civil war, the country suddenly emerged from the shadow of militancy and registered a big boom in tourist arrivals in a short period. There were no houseboats when we introduced the houseboat at the Gregory lake in Nuwara Eliya,” Mr. Panikulangara, a former member of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka and director, SAJ Houseboat Builders and Operators, told The Hindu.

Initially, there was barely any competition. “This provided good returns for us in the initial years. Later, we leased out the houseboat to a Sri Lankan politician for a rent of ₹3 lakh a month, which was more than comfortable for us at the time. But the Easter day bombing in 2019 dealt a huge blow to the country’s tourism sector. It was followed by the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 that brought the tourism industry to its knees,” Mr. Joseph explained.

The kettuvallam has not welcomed any guest for the last three years. “We had even received a substantial number of Kerala tourists who frequented Sri Lanka for gambling and in connection with ‘sex tourism’. We had invested around ₹1.5 crore in the project and recovered a good portion of the investment. But now, there’s no point in having an idle houseboat anchored in a Sri Lankan lake when there’s no certainty that the tourism sector will revive in the near future,” Mr. Panikulangara said.