If you manage to make it to the southwestern tip of India, where the backwaters of Kerala lay, you can commission a houseboat and spend a day or two floating peacefully along the vast waterways that weave through fishing villages and paddy fields. There isn't much to do in the late afternoon but to lean back and sip a fresh coconut or sweet, milky tea as you watch the horizon and the water melt into one, and the other houseboats make their way back to shore across the water's pearly surface.