Just a suggestion - you may want to organize some people to take a private Backwaters tour. When Ngaire went to India she posted those fabulous photos of her and Linda lounging on a lovely small houseboat during their tour, so that is what we were all looking forward to!

The Regent excursion, however, involves touring the backwaters on big, uncharming boats - you will be sitting on plastic deck chairs lined up on an open sided deck, not lounging like pashas on a small boat, although you will see those go by and gaze longingly at them.. On TAJ all of the LCT people on the excursion pooled our our tickets and got on the same boat, which I believe held 24 people; 22 of us and one other couple.

I think you can book a private tour for around $100 pp, including lunch - I know you want to have the "free" excursions, but this is definitely a place where a private tour on smaller boats would be the way to go.

Here's my blog description of the day, which we all enjoyed, but could have been so much better:

http://expect-to-fly.blogspot.com/2013/04/kerala-backwaters.html