The palm leaves rustle and keep you company
while you laugh. The waters twinkle in merriment. The
golden' lion guards' raise an amused eyebrow and turn
the other way leaving you to enjoy your mirth
undisturbed. Warm feelings of family and its intricate
ties surround you and include you not as an outsider
but as one of its own. Welcome to Olavipe the gift of
the waves, and Thekkanatt Parayil, the ancestral house of the Parayil Tharakans.

A house used to laughter echoing through its tiled
passages - through one, into the other - till at last the
sound is set free into the wild and carried on by the
waves and the birds. Welcome to the happy house.

The Parayils have lived in this house for more than a century.
The house and its laid back guardians, the stone lions,
would have some stories to tell us if they could speak.
But as things are, they are content to bask in the sun some
more each day and keep an indulgent eye on the family,
keeping their sense of serenity at the changes and
modernizations each generation has brought in.

The house has had a mini zoo - an ancestor loved
animals - with bears and parakeets and dogs beyond
count. It has seen numerous weddings and births,
games of table tennis, cricket, football, and thousands of
pretend games played generation after generation of
children on the white sands of the 'mittam' (the
front and back yards of the house).

The dining table is long and stretches on, to hold all the food for a family hungry after a day's work and play. Fish in a hundred different avatars, duck, vegetables
and poultry raised and grown within the Thekkanat
grounds, all cooked to perfection, to satiate the appetite of a truly 'foodie' family.

There are so many things to do here (if you feel
up to it in a day interspersed with so many meals!) There's table tennis, basketball, football, cricket,
boating, tree climbing, fishing… and if you are bored with all these 'usual' things to do, you can always dream up new things, sitting on the sun warmed 'kulir kallu'.

Facilities

The eight large and airy bedrooms of the house need no air-conditioning. The bathrooms attached to the bedrooms offer both cold and warm water options. This stately heritage home and its estate provide facilities for both rest and recreation.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner will be with the family and other guests. Food is mostly in the traditional Kerala style. If you choose to, you can even eat off a banana leaf as Keralites do at festival time.

You can walk up to the waterfront on the western side and the southern side. The paddy fields on the western side of the house grow a special variety of rice used in the household.

Vanilla , pepper, arecanut, mulberry and cassava are also grown on the estate. Prawn farming is active in the season in the larger ponds and canals. The canals are also used for rearing the local delicacy-the pearl spot fish.

Over a hundred varieties of Ayurvedic medicinal plants are cultivated and preserved here. A short walk away from the house are the lagoons where prawn farming is done. Nearby are the canals where the pearl-spot - 'Karimeen' in local parlance, a gourmet's delight - and other fish grow.

We also have facilities for outdoor table tennis, badminton, cricket, volleyball, basketball, indoor games like carroms and chess. We can also provide Canoes, wind-surfing, walking tracks, bi-cycles.

Internet and other communication facilities are available on the island.

Activities

• Browse through the Family Archives. This treasure-trove of old family documents, letters and photographs was put together for the younger generation of the house to understand their roots and touch the past. It also houses rare documents and papers forming part of Kerala's social fabric of the last two centuries. The archives include old cooking vessels, farming tools and other curiosities of the house which are no longer in use.
• Fish in the family's farms or in the surrounding lagoons/canals using traditional 'Choonda' (fishing rod). Learn to cast fishing nets in the Kerala style.
• Learn Kerala cooking. Learn 'Parayil Duck Roast' and 'Karimeen pollichathu' from the family recipe book.
• Swim in the village pond.
• Watch the coconut climbers at work with the crop, which is picked every 45 days.
• Help with the feeding of prawns during the farming season
• Take a bicycle tour of the village. You can even walk through the village and soak up the ambience of the place.
• Learn the traditional techniques of making coir.
• Row in small country boats through the village canals. Visit other nearby islands.
• Take a 'serenity cruise' at sunset - a slow boat ride through the Kaithappuzha backwaters and through the lagoons surrounding the island.
• Visit the 'Healing garden' on the family's estate, where many local ayurvedic medicinal plants are being cultivated and preserved.
• Visit the island's ancient places of worship. Known for their unique architectural styles, they include three churches built by the family, the oldest of which is almost two centuries old.
• Play badminton, volleyball, table tennis, chess and carroms. You could even join in a village cricket or football game.
• Do absolutely nothing if you choose to! You can relax on the 'Kulir Kallu' (a cooling stone) at one end of the house with a book, laze on a hammock with lots of tender coconut water to drink - or just contemplate with pleasure all the things that you are not doing!

Other inviting possibilities:

Olavipe is just 25 kilometers from the heart of Cochin city. It is an hour's drive from the Cochin International Airport and the tourist hotspots of Alleppey, Kumarakom and Fort Cochin.

• Visit Cochin, the commercial capital of Kerala and a world centre for spice trace.
• Walk around Fort Cochin and soak in the ambience of the historical area.
• Visit the historic Synagogue on Jew Street and the antique market around it.
• Take boat trips around some of the beautidul islands in Cochin.
• See the Chinese fishing nets - still used the way they were centuries ago.
• Ayurvedic therapy on prior consultation and appointment.
• Houseboat rides through some of the most beautiful waterways of Alleppey.

Inner View