The Indian state of Kerala has a strong rowing tradition and a history of competitive boating that goes back a long time. With so many people from Kerala living and working in the UAE, quite a lot of Kerala’s culture can be seen in the expats of UAE. Now, Kerala’s boating tradition also seems to have made the migration from the homeland to the adoptive land of the expats.
It is a tradition that dates back to the 13th century when a king of the region tasked a famous carpenter to fashion a war boat called Chundan Vallam. So, it was about 650 years ago that what we now refer to as the famous snake boats of Kerala (so-called because of how they ‘snake’ through the water channels) came into being.
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