Purity at Lake Vembanad

A strange white Italianate villa sitting directly on the Kerala backwaters, Purity is a small boutique hotel with just four rooms and two suites, one of which takes over the entire upper floor. The Malabar House group runs it with the kind of restraint the name implies: spa, pool, and a teaching kitchen, but the water does most of the work. Dinner with the backwaters as a backdrop makes the flat-screen television feel a little beside the point.