“Cranganor History Café & Riverside Château”is a labour of love. Rasmi, Vineeth & their daughters Tanvi & Tia moved to Kerala in 2017 to give shape to the place they had been dreaming about for years. Rasmi & Vineeth are MBAs from IIM Bangalore and XLRI Jamshedpur respectively and between them have almost three decades of experience working at large corporations in various metros in India. Rasmi’s connection with the region began in 2011 when her work in the area of conserving and revitalizing the traditional craft of handloom in Kerala brought her to the village across the river, Chendamangalam, one of the traditional centres of excellence of a craft that is now quickly perishing. For Vineeth, this is the region of his ancestral village and he has fond memories of numerous summer vacations spent here as a kid back in the 70s & 80s and etched in his mind are the picturesque rivers & backwaters, the serene beauty of temples, the games kids played, fishing & food. As a child, he remembers hearing adults talk about Vanchinaad, the old Chera capital that existed here two millennia ago and of the legend of the ancient port city of Muziris. ‘Cranganor’ History Café & Riverside Château is located in the region of this old port city, which historians and archaeologists are now uncovering to be ancient India’s gateway to civilizations with a history dating back more than 3 millennia. By the 1st Century BC, the Chinese, Arabs, Jews, Greeks and Romans were already trading spices here. More recently, the Portuguese, Dutch and the British arrived, initially to trade and soon were part of the internal power struggles between Travancore, Kochi, Calicut and the Mysore kingdoms. All of them have left their imprints on the region.