Aymanam, a picturesque village beside the backwaters near Kottayam, has found itself in the league of Sri Lanka, Bhutan, London, Oklahoma (in the US), Seoul and Istanbul as among the 30 best places to visit in 2022, in a list published by Conde Nast Traveller magazine.
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Sikkim, Meghalaya, Goa, Kolkata and Odisha are among the India locales in the list.
“Kerala’s Responsible Tourism (RT) Mission chose Aymanam village for its activities in 2018, going on to train home-stay operators, community tour leaders (including women) and others in RT practices. This in turn resulted in an increase in a number of tourists visiting the locale to savour its cuisine, culture and village life, including through cycle tours and walking trails through paddy fields,” says K. Rupesh Kumar, State coordinator of the mission.
The village had shot to fame in 1997 as the setting of Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize-winning ‘The God of Small Things’. The State government declared it a model-tourism village in 2020, following which it shared space with Kumarakom - another popular RT destination. Aymanam bagged the ‘One to Watch Award’ of World Travel Mart, in 2021. A total of over 1,000 people have so far been trained in different skills, as part of the RT venture, he added.
Garbage treatment measures, initiatives to rid the locale of plastic waste by popularising cloth bags and mapping of local tourism resources were done. A water lily fest too was held in December 2019, coinciding with the peak tourist season.