عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Culture

Kerala’s Snake Boat Racers Keep Tradition Afloat in Face of Floods and Financial Challenges

Rowers from the United Boat Club train on the Pamba river in preparation for the Nehru Trophy snake boat race, near Kainakary, Kerala, India, August 7, 2026. (Reuters)
Rowers from the United Boat Club train on the Pamba river in preparation for the Nehru Trophy snake boat race, near Kainakary, Kerala, India, August 7, 2026. (Reuters)
TT
TT

Kerala’s Snake Boat Racers Keep Tradition Afloat in Face of Floods and Financial Challenges

Rowers from the United Boat Club train on the Pamba river in preparation for the Nehru Trophy snake boat race, near Kainakary, Kerala, India, August 7, 2026. (Reuters)
Rowers from the United Boat Club train on the Pamba river in preparation for the Nehru Trophy snake boat race, near Kainakary, Kerala, India, August 7, 2026. (Reuters)

This weekend around 20 wooden boats, 100-foot long and powered by about 100 rowers each, will slice through Kerala's backwaters to compete for the most prestigious trophy in the centuries-old sport of "vallam kali", or snake boat racing.

Thousands will cheer on from the shore and houseboats as the slender vessels, whose raised sterns give them a cobra-like appearance, race for village pride on a 1.4 km course at Punnamada Lake.

As well as the splashing of hundreds of oars hitting the water in unison over 90 times per minute, the rowing is accompanied by a cacophony of chants and whistles as well as the thunderous beat of thick wooden poles pounding on the deck.

The Alappuzha district, which used to be known as the rice bowl of Kerala because of the proliferation of paddy fields, contains some of the lowest lying land in India and is prone to flooding during the ‌monsoon rains.

But while ‌most villagers check the swollen Pamba River each monsoon morning with trepidation, Vakkachan Theverkkat sees ‌opportunity -- ⁠another chance to ⁠train his roster of 150-odd rowers.

Vakkachan is a former senior oarsman with a lot of experience of racing the massive boats that compete across a three-to-five month season, including Saturday's prestigious Nehru Trophy.

"It runs in my family," said Vakkachan, the leading captain of the Kainakary-based United Boat Club (UBC), which has been competing for the Nehru Trophy since 1963 and won it 12 times.

"Our club has won the Nehru Trophy the most times and also lost it the most times," he told Reuters with a smile.

Deadly floods killed 28 people and displaced thousands across Kerala this month and parts of Kainakary were also affected.

Several roads became inaccessible as houses and buildings stood half-submerged, surrounded by ⁠paddy fields that had swollen into lakes.

Yet UBC's rowers -- mostly locals but including oarsmen from ‌distant states like Uttarakhand and Manipur -- maintained their rigorous practice schedule, often twice ‌daily.

UBC are rated a decent chance for a 13th triumph as they have been hired to row "Veeyapuram", the boat which won the Nehru Trophy ‌and the Champions Boat League last season in the hands of the Village Boat Club.

"VICIOUS VEERU"

Like most Chundan Vallam, or ‌snake boats, Veeyapuram is community-owned and belongs to a village of the same name some 30 km (19 miles) south of Kainakary.

Hundreds of villagers raised around 9 million Indian rupees ($94,300) to launch the boat -- nicknamed "Vicious Veeru" -- in 2019.

Funding each season costs nearly 7 million rupees ($73,000), with the boat owners earning back only a fraction from sponsors and prize money.

While the Kerala government often uses snake boat races to promote tourism, shareholder Manikanthan ‌Nair TM said the boat-owning communities get little help as they battle financial hardship and natural disasters to keep the sport alive.

Kamarudeen KA, the secretary of the Veeyapuram ownership group, ⁠however, said they would not ⁠give up the tradition despite the challenges.

"As long as we're here, we'll keep (this boat) running," he said.

"People speak of it proudly and with admiration. We feel proud that this boat has given us that recognition and identity."

Originally designed as battle canoes in the 13th century, the snake boats have become unlikely symbols of unity in a culturally diverse state.

"There's no barrier like religion or caste when it comes to the boat ... we all pray for its success," said Robin Varghese, a Christian priest and member of the Veeyapuram committee.

"This is our blood and culture," said UBC secretary Sajimon B.

Boats can compete for decades. The Karichal snake boat, launched in 1970, narrowly beat Veeyapuram to win the 2024 Nehru Trophy.

Most Viewed

 
 
Culture

Egyptian Mummy Portraits Show Antiquity's Piercing Gaze in New Rome Show

Some of the masterpieces in the Rome exhibition were allowed to leave Egypt for the first time. Andreas SOLARO / AFP
Some of the masterpieces in the Rome exhibition were allowed to leave Egypt for the first time. Andreas SOLARO / AFP
TT
TT

Egyptian Mummy Portraits Show Antiquity's Piercing Gaze in New Rome Show

Some of the masterpieces in the Rome exhibition were allowed to leave Egypt for the first time. Andreas SOLARO / AFP
Some of the masterpieces in the Rome exhibition were allowed to leave Egypt for the first time. Andreas SOLARO / AFP

An elegant woman gazes out from her portrait with expressive eyes, a gilded wreath worn in her hair and a gentle, questioning look on her face.

She is one of the 2,000-year-old "Faces of Fayum", startlingly realistic funerary -- or mummy -- portraits painted after Egypt became part of the Roman empire.

The fragile portraits dating from the first to third centuries AD -- painted on thin wooden panels and designed to be placed over the face of mummies -- will go on display in Rome in what organizers hail as a "milestone" collaboration between Italy and Egypt, AFP reported.

"Egypt and Rome, the Faces of Fayum", opening Wednesday at Rome's Ara Pacis museum, also includes mummies, masks, shrouds, jewelry, marble busts and statuary.

The majority of the artefacts come from Egypt, with some allowed to leave the country for the first time.

Such is the case of the "Tondo of the Two Brothers" from Cairo's Egyptian Museum, a freshly restored double portrait from the time of Emperor Hadrian that depicts two curly-haired young men, possibly brothers, with soulful eyes.

Rome's top official for cultural heritage, Claudio Parisi Presicce, called the work an "absolute masterpiece, perhaps the most important pictorial work to have survived from antiquity".

"These are simple wooden panels, often just a few millimeters thick, made of wood... and they were used to depict, through extremely naturalistic painting, the faces of the individuals who were being buried," Parisi Presicce told a press conference Monday.

Rooted in the tradition of Hellenistic painting, the portraits placed over the head of the mummy and secured into its wrappings come from a relatively brief period between the first and third centuries AD, after Egypt became a province of Rome.

In a fusion of two great civilizations -- Egyptian and Roman -- the men, women and children portrayed often bear Egyptian features, but wear Roman dress.

Their faces are vivid, and haunting, whether bearing signs of greying hair and wrinkles, or the long eyelashes and chubby cheeks of a child.

"These people are not dead," Italian figurative painter Amedeo Modigliani once said of the Fayum portraits.

"They are more alive than those who gaze upon them."

- Ushering the dead -

Works from the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Landesmuseum Württemberg and other international museums round out the exhibit.

A fertile area of Egypt on the edge of the desert, Fayum's arid climate helped preserve the delicate painted wood, textiles and papyrus on display in the exhibition.

One work, on loan from the Louvre, is a spectacular, near-pristine linen shroud depicting a man standing between the mummy he will become and Anubis, who helped usher the dead into the Afterlife.

Some of the female portraits are adorned in sumptuous jewelry, such as that of the woman "Isidora" from the first century AD, whose three-tiered gold necklace adorned with precious stones, pearl earrings and elaborately curled hairdo project her status.

Parisi Presicce said that "countless questions" remain about the compelling portraits.

"Were they made earlier and kept until the moment of death? Were they painted at the time the deceased was buried? Were they panels that were hung in homes, in residences?" he asked.

A nail found at the top of one of the portraits makes this theory plausible, he said.

Hisham El-Leithy, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the images from so long ago have an uncanny power to move us.

"They are people like us, we look at them, they look back at you across 2,000 years," he said.

"That is the power of the portrait."

The exhibition runs until May 2.

Culture

Museum Sold Kandinsky for $62,000. It May Fetch $80 Million At Auction

“Betonte Ecken” is guaranteed to set an auction record for Kandinsky's work when it goes on sale at Christie's later this month. (Christie's) 
“Betonte Ecken” is guaranteed to set an auction record for Kandinsky's work when it goes on sale at Christie's later this month. (Christie's) 
TT
TT

Museum Sold Kandinsky for $62,000. It May Fetch $80 Million At Auction

“Betonte Ecken” is guaranteed to set an auction record for Kandinsky's work when it goes on sale at Christie's later this month. (Christie's) 
“Betonte Ecken” is guaranteed to set an auction record for Kandinsky's work when it goes on sale at Christie's later this month. (Christie's) 

Some 15 years after Solomon R. Guggenheim died, the foundation managing his extensive art collection concluded that it owned more Wassily Kandinsky paintings than it knew what to do with.

The late American businessman had been among the Russian painter’s most prominent and dedicated patrons.

But in 1964, despite operating its namesake museum in Manhattan, Guggenheim’s foundation placed 50 of its 170 Kandinsky works — characteristically colorful, geometric takes on abstraction — on sale “for want of space,” according to CNN.

Announcing the decision, his nephew, Harry F Guggenheim, said trustees feared the art would otherwise remain hidden away “in our vaults,” according to reports at the time. “We have concluded that this should not be the fate of these paintings,” he added.

It was a noble sentiment but perhaps, in hindsight, a costly one.

At a London auction later that year, the 50 paintings fetched a combined £536,580, then equivalent to around $1.5 million.

Many of them have since reappeared on the market at significantly higher prices.

And now one of the works — “Betonte Ecken,” which in 1964 attracted a winning bid of just £22,000 (then around $62,000, or $540,000 in today’s money) from a New York art dealer — is returning to auction with an estimate of $60 million to $80 million.

“The Guggenheim had such an embarrassment of riches back then,” said Max Carter, global chairman of 20th and 21st century art at Christie’s, the auction house behind this month’s sale.

The foundation “sold tremendous masterpieces, which would be unthinkable to sell today,” he added, speaking over the phone from New York.

“Betonte Ecken” is not just poised to break the auction record for Kandinsky’s work — it is certain to do so. Christie’s said a guarantor has confirmed an offer exceeding the record £37.2 million ($44.55 million) paid for his painting “Murnau mit Kirche II” in 2023.

The dramatic appreciation in the value of Kandinsky’s work is a testament to his status in today’s art market. While his reputation was well-established by the time of the Guggenheim sale (at which point he had already been dead for two decades), “Betonte Ecken” was, then, “still very forward-looking,” Carter said.

“Now it’s become canonical,” he added, calling the painting “quintessential” Kandinsky.

“If you were to go on the street and ask the first 10 people who’d heard of Kandinsky to close their eyes and describe what one of his masterpieces looked like, it would be this.”

Culture

Makkah Heritage Returns to Home Designs with Traditional Architectural Details and a Modern Touch

Some contemporary designs are also reviving the internal courtyard, a key feature of traditional Makkah homes - SPA
Some contemporary designs are also reviving the internal courtyard, a key feature of traditional Makkah homes - SPA
TT
TT

Makkah Heritage Returns to Home Designs with Traditional Architectural Details and a Modern Touch

Some contemporary designs are also reviving the internal courtyard, a key feature of traditional Makkah homes - SPA
Some contemporary designs are also reviving the internal courtyard, a key feature of traditional Makkah homes - SPA

More Makkah residents are turning to the city’s traditional architectural style for inspiration when designing homes and villas, reflecting the community’s enduring connection to its architectural heritage.

Features of traditional Makkah architecture are becoming increasingly prominent in modern home designs. These include wooden rawashin (ornate bay windows) featuring geometric patterns, architectural arches, ornate wooden doors, mashrabiyas (projected wooden balconies), and internal courtyards, SPA reported.

Some contemporary designs are also reviving the internal courtyard, a key feature of traditional Makkah homes. It provides an open family space at the center of the house, balancing privacy with natural ventilation.

In this context, some architecture enthusiasts are combining heritage elements with modern technologies by preserving exterior designs inspired by old Makkah houses while incorporating contemporary engineering solutions for space planning, lighting, thermal insulation, and air conditioning systems. This approach meets modern comfort and sustainability requirements without compromising the building’s visual identity.

Architecture and heritage enthusiasts believe reviving the Makkah architectural style is one way to preserve the city’s urban identity, particularly amid rapid urban expansion and the growing diversity of modern construction styles.