There's no one else on the water and that could be because the most popular way of exploring Kerala's waterways - specifically the backwaters in the Alleppey district 50km away - is by lodging on a houseboat: large, converted rice barges.
As a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, I've covered stories across India and stayed in places from Gujarati havelis - ancient royal homes converted into guesthouses - to ornate Kashmiri houseboats to austere vegetarian ashrams and dodgy Delhi backpacker crash pads.
It's a former World War Two lifeboat that had been converted into a small home in the sixties and docked at one of the town's historic houseboat communities.
Things are going so well, in fact, that the government is offering major incentives for Srinagar families, many of whom live on houseboats, to convert their homes into holiday homestays.
This belonged to a man who, for reasons lost to history, had filled it with sewing machines as part of his preparations to convert the structure into a houseboat that he hoped to tow to Alaska.
