Champakulam

Champakulam is a Divya Desam in Alappuzha (Alleppey) district, Kerala, situated in the Kuttanad region — the famous 'rice bowl of Kerala' and the area where paddy is cultivated below sea level, surrounded by the backwater network of the Pamba, Manimala, and Achankovil rivers. The Vishnu temple here is set in this extraordinary watery landscape. Nammalvar celebrated this kshetra in his Tiruvoimozhi. The Champakulam boat race — held annually on the second day after the Karkidaka (Ramayana month) new moon — is one of the oldest and most traditional snake-boat races in Kerala, with deep religious significance as an offering to the deity. The Kerala Divya Desams are unique in India for their backwater settings — several of them are most easily accessed by boat, giving the pilgrimage a dimension found nowhere else in the 108 Divya Desams.

The Champakulam temple is associated with a story of the deity's self-manifestation in the waterways. A fisherman who cast his nets in the Pamba brought up a sacred idol of Vishnu, which was installed at this location. The idol's emergence from water — the sacred medium of the backwater world — is seen as Vishnu's declaration of his presence in the watery landscape of Kerala, appearing as the lord of the waters just as he rests on the cosmic ocean in his Anantasayana form.