Nobel laureate and renowned biophysicist Michael Levitt was left stranded in a houseboat in Alappuzha district of Kerala on Wednesday after strikers stopped the boat during its cruise.
Several foreign tourists, including Levitt, were stranded for hours in the houseboat. Michael Levitt, a Stanford University professor, won the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 2013 for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.
He shared the prize with Martin Karplus and Arieh Warshel. The trade unions had earlier informed that Kerala's tourism sector was exempted from Wednesday's general strike. However, this promise was not honoured by the strikers, boat owners complained.
The houseboats which started the journey from Kumarakom on Tuesday had anchored at the R block at nightfall. The strikers prevented the boats from starting in the morning.
Reports suggest that boats were stopped at several other places in Alappuzha. "Tourists have been stranded at the boats from 7 am," Maniyara Boats operator Kens informed.
The three boats which were held back for hours was let off only by 12.30 pm. Levitt at Kerala University Michael Levitt had visited Thiruvananthapuram's Karyavattom University before his tour of Alappuzha.
The towering fig tree in the university premises was planted by Levitt in 2010. During his visit to the campus this time, he embraced the huge tree.
