JOIN USNature never did betray a soul that truly loved her.” Standing true to this statement is a heavenly cluster of more than 40 islands in one place! A 20-minute ride from Udupi through Santhekatte will take us to this place named Kemmannu Padutonse or Kodi-Bengre, a scenic place that is slowly becoming a tourist attraction.
Here, we can see an incredibly large pool of backwaters collected as a holding ground for equally mesmerising islands. It is an exceptional sight to watch the sea and its backwater lie opposite to each other, but more surprises await us as we take a boat ride along the 40 islands through Kemmannu Padutonse. Padu Kuduru, Balikera Kuduru and Kukkude are some of the islands here.
Enthralling experience
Sathish, or popularly known Sathyanna, the only boatman available in the area now, says that the number of tourists visiting this place is increasing by the day. For a ride through majority of the islands in the area, it takes around two and a half hours. After listening to Sathyanna’s stories of people in the islands, how they are owned by individuals, and sought after by many, we felt like children listening to the Panchatantra stories.
According to Sathyanna, most of the islands here are private properties. We can also see homes in some of the islands. All the construction work of the houses was carried out with the materials that reached the islands through hand-oared boats. Many of the islands’ residents depend on Sathyanna’s boats for their everyday travel.
We cannot imagine how their lives might have been; for we assume that it would have been highly adventurous and peaceful. However, this would perhaps be far from the truth if their hardships of staying far away from even the very basic necessities of life are not taken into account. Despite this, people live here and some islands are owned by individual families. There are islands without human population, those that produce over 30,000 coconuts. Each island here has a story behind it.
Fishing is a way of life for many of the families here. It is a picturesque sight to watch men, women and even children row their little boats through the islands in order to place their fishing nets and collect them at midnight or the next morning. There is also a location in the midst of the backwaters where ferrymen collect shells in order to extract limestone out of them.
Taking a tour of these islands on Sathyanna’s boat is a peaceful and enthralling experience. Nitish Rao, a regular tourist here, says that the entire experience is incomplete without Sathyanna oaring the boat and narrating island stories.
Be it the right wind, or the water flowing in the opposite direction, Sathyanna takes people through the islands and answers their questions patiently. He has been doing this job for over 25 years now, and he feels that Padutonse has become a popular tourist spot over the past 10 years.
For those of you who want to visit the place, the backwaters of Kemmannu Padutonse is a photographer’s heaven, a traveller’s paradise and a nature lover’s dream destination!