The backwaters are overbooked at the wrong end
Almost every Kerala itinerary routes through Alleppey, which is where the houseboats are concentrated, which is why the stretch of water you will be on has a great many other houseboats on it.
The boats are lovely. The crews cook extremely well. The problem is density, and it is entirely solvable by moving twenty kilometres.
Go north to the Vembanad side, or out towards Kumarakom, or further still to the quieter channels where the boats are fewer and the villages along the bank are still doing what villages along a bank do. The same boat, the same food, a different view.
Second thing worth knowing: one night on a houseboat is plenty for most people. It is slow, by design, and there is a limit to how much slow is restful before it is just slow. One night afloat and two or three on land somewhere with a garden is the shape that works.
And if anybody is selling you a day-boat shared with twenty other people as "the backwaters", that is a ferry.
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