A Snake Boat Won the 2026 Nehru Trophy by 0.12 Second on Alappuzha's Punnamada Lake, in Backwaters Where Rice Grows Below Sea Level

Aroma Chundan won the 72nd Nehru Trophy Boat Race on 22 August 2026, finishing on Punnamada Lake at Alappuzha in 4 minutes 23.328 seconds. All India Radio lists Nadubhagom Chundan second at 4:23.448, which makes the margin 0.12 second, and says 71 boats took part, 22 of them traditional snake boats. The race society’s official winners list gives the winning boat as Aroma-1, rowed for Aroma Boat Club of Paravur, Kollam.

The 2026 race and the club that keeps winning

The same list shows Pallathuruthy Boat Club of Alappuzha winning in 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024, five editions in a row among those held. It has no entry for 2020 or 2021. Veeyapuram, rowed for the Village Boat Club of Kainakary, won in 2025.

All India Radio called the 2026 finish a nail-biter and one of the closest in the event’s history. It added that Alappuzha district declared a local holiday for government offices and educational institutions on race day. The state itself has been officially Keralam since 25 August 2026, as tuput’s state profile records, and this piece uses Kerala where older sources do.

The race society’s ticket list for the 72nd race runs from Rs 100 for a lawn seat to Rs 1,00,000 (1 lakh) for a corporate box that admits five. Tourist Gold seats cost Rs 3,000.

What a chundan vallam is

The race society describes the chundan vallams, the snake boats, as wooden vessels more than 100 feet long with prows that rise like a serpent’s head. Each carries around 100 to 150 people, which the society says includes helmsmen, singers and rhythm keepers, and the oars move at 100 to 120 strokes a minute to chenda drums and vanchipattu, the boat songs.

The English name came from outside. The Alappuzha district page says colonial rulers called them “snake boats” after a boat type found in Norway, and adds that the Kerala boats look little like their European namesakes.

The society says preparations start weeks ahead, with villages hosting mass feasts where Hindus, Christians and Muslims sit side by side to feed the oarsmen.

How a prime minister’s boat ride became a trophy

Jawaharlal Nehru visited Alappuzha in 1952. The district page says he travelled by boat from Kottayam to Alappuzha through the waterlogged Kuttanad region, and that an impromptu race in his honour was won by Nadubhagom Chundan. Kerala Tourism dates this exhibition race to 22 December 1952. Both pages say Nehru jumped into the winning boat and rode it toward the town jetty.

After he returned to Delhi he sent a silver trophy shaped like a snake boat, set on a wooden base. The inscription reads: “To the winners of the boat race which is a unique feature of community life in Travancore Cochin.” The prize was first called the Prime Minister’s Trophy.

The record is not uniform about what counts as the first race. Kerala Tourism calls the 1954 race at Kainakary the first official one, won by Kavalam Chundan, and says the venue was dropped afterwards because of adverse conditions. The race society’s winners list numbers the 1952 race as the first edition and the 1954 race as the second. Kerala Tourism says organisers then marked a 1,380-metre track on Punnamada Lake as the permanent venue. The race society gives the modern course as 1.4 kilometres, divided into marked tracks.

The Alappuzha district page puts the crowd at about 200,000 and says the race is held on the second Saturday of August. The 2026 race was on 22 August, the fourth Saturday, so check the date each year. Kerala Tourism says the race is part of its Champions Boat League, whose season begins with this race.

Vembanad Lake and the rice fields below it

The race course lies on the Vembanad backwaters. The district page gives the lake as 84 kilometres long, 3.1 kilometres wide on average and 204 square kilometres in area, running from Alappuzha to Kochi. The Pamba, Achankovil, Manimala, Meenachil and Muvattupuzha rivers flow into it.

The India Wetlands portal factsheet records the Vembanad-Kol Wetland, a Ramsar site (a wetland of international importance), as designated on 19 August 2002 and covering 1,51,250 hectares. It lists 225 bird species and 102 fish species there and says the wetland supports the livelihoods of over 0.2 million households. Kerala Tourism describes the Alappuzha area as a network of canals, rivers, lakes and inlets stretching over 900 kilometres.

The Kuttanad delta south of the lake is where the farming is unusual. Professor R. Ramakumar of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, writing in the Review of Agrarian Studies, gives its area as about 55,000 hectares across 10 taluks and says farmers reclaimed fields from Vembanad Lake in the 19th and 20th centuries, with encouragement from the Travancore rulers. He puts about half the area 1 to 2 metres below mean sea level, and researchers writing on the University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute blog on 5 August 2026 give 1.2 to 3 metres.

The FAO has listed the Kuttanad Below Sea Level Farming System as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System since 2013. Its page calls it “the only system in India that favours rice cultivation below sea level”. It says Kuttanad produces about 25 per cent of Kerala’s rice, that farmers rotate rice with fish, and that ducks go into the fields after harvest for food, manure and income. Padasekhara committees share the cost of annual maintenance of the bunds, the earth embankments around the fields.

Two structures protect the crop. The district page calls the Thannermukkom regulator the largest mud regulator in India and says it is meant to block tidal action and saltwater. Ramakumar dates its three phases to 1965, 1975 and 2018, and the Thottappally spillway to 1958.

The pressures are on record too. The FAO page says fish diversity has fallen from 150 species to 36 over thirty years. Ramakumar says the 2018 flood submerged more than 50,000 houses fully or partly. The Manchester researchers reported that farmers said the shutters at the bund and the spillway often did not match rainfall, tides or the farming calendar. The rains behind all of this are explained in the science of the monsoon.

How a kettuvallam is built

Kerala Tourism says today’s houseboats are modernised versions of old kettuvallams, which carried tons of rice and spices. The name comes from Malayalam: kettu means to tie and vallam means boat.

The hull is built from planks of the anjili tree, Artocarpus hirsutus, also called wild jack. In the traditional method the planks are tied with coir (coconut fibre rope), with coconut fibre packed between them as caulking. Kerala Tourism’s article on houseboat making says no nails are used, then lists bronze nails as an alternative, so the page does not settle that point. It says a black resin from cashew is used on the framework, and that the roof uses bamboo mats, sticks and areca palm wood.

Alumkadavu, a village on Ashtamudi Lake at Karunagapally in Kollam district, is described by Kerala Tourism as the place where the first houseboats in India were built. Visitors can watch the building work there, and the page says a boat with careful maintenance can last for generations.

For a houseboat stay, Kerala Tourism runs a classification scheme with three grades, Silver, Gold and Diamond Vessel, under a government order of 8 July 2019. Silver has the minimum facilities and Diamond the most. An inspection committee checks each boat against a checklist, and the Director of Tourism issues the certificate.

Champakulam, the race that opens the season

Champakulam’s Moolam boat race comes earlier in the year than the Nehru Trophy, on the day of Moolam in the Malayalam month of Mithunam, usually in June or July. Kerala Tourism calls it the first boat race of the season in Kerala.

The race commemorates a water procession that carried a replacement idol to the Sree Krishna temple at Ambalappuzha. The panchayat’s account says the party stopped overnight at the Chambakulam house of a Christian dignitary, Mappilassery Itty Thommen. A delegation from the temple still brings the family palpayasam, a milk pudding, and the race begins only after prayers there.

The sources give different ages. The panchayat dates the race to 1545, which it calls over 400 years. Kerala Tourism says nearly four centuries. Both say that in 1952 Sri Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma, the Rajapramukh of Travancore-Cochin, instituted the Rajapramukhan Trophy for the first snake boat home.

Getting there

Kerala Tourism says the best time to visit Alappuzha is from October to March, and that the monsoon from June to September brings heavy rain and may limit some activities. Alappuzha Railway Station is in the city. The district page gives Cochin International Airport as the nearest international airport, 82.8 kilometres away and about 2 hours by NH 66, and Kottayam as about 50 kilometres east.

The classification certificate for a houseboat is valid for two years from the date of the order, according to Kerala Tourism.