Kerala and the south: 14 days
The alternative fourteen days, and the one we recommend to anyone nervous about a first trip to India. The south is greener, quieter, better fed and considerably gentler on a newcomer than the north, without being any less interesting. It is also where the temples are still in daily use rather than
- Duration
- 14 days
- Pace
- Moderate
- Hotel changes
- 7
- Best months
- Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar
- From
- $2,780 per person
The route runs west to east: Kochi and the Keralan coast, up into the tea hills, over the ghats into Tamil Nadu, then across the Chola heartland to the sea again at Mahabalipuram. No backtracking and no internal flights.
Who it suits: first-time visitors who want India without the volume, second-time visitors who did the north, and anyone who would rather look at temples than forts.
Your specialist: your named India specialist, with our Delhi office coordinating the southern ground team.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive Kochi. Transfer to Fort Kochi, the old Portuguese and Dutch quarter, which is a walkable peninsula of colonial houses and one of the softest landings in India. Nothing scheduled.
Day 2: Kochi. The fish market and the Chinese fishing nets at first light, then Mattancherry: the spice warehouses, the synagogue, the old trading streets. Evening Kathakali performance, arriving early for the make-up.
Day 3: Onto the backwaters. Ninety minutes to Kumarakom and aboard a private boat at midday. Lunch cooked on the deck, an afternoon through paddy channels too narrow for the big boats, and a night moored in silence.
Day 4: Backwaters to Munnar. Off after breakfast, then four and a half hours climbing into the Western Ghats. The last hour is tea in every direction.
Day 5: Munnar. A walk through a working estate with a planter who explains what plucking two leaves and a bud actually means, the tea factory, and Eravikulam National Park for the Nilgiri tahr. Note the park closes for roughly seven weeks in the calving season, usually February into March, and we check your dates against it.
Day 6: Munnar to Madurai. Four and a half hours down the eastern side of the ghats, out of Kerala and onto the Tamil plain. The landscape and the language both change in about twenty minutes.
Day 7: Madurai. The Meenakshi temple, which is a functioning city of 14 towers and thousands of daily worshippers rather than a monument. Best at dawn and again for the evening ceremony around nine, when the god is carried to the goddess’s chamber. Non-Hindus are not admitted to the inner sanctum. In between, the flower market and the banana market, which are the real ones.
Day 8: Madurai to Chettinad. Two hours. Chettinad is a district of about 70 villages built by a merchant banking caste who made fortunes across South East Asia and spent them on mansions of Burmese teak, Italian marble and Athangudi tiles. Many are now empty. It is strange and completely unlike anywhere else in India.
Day 9: Chettinad. The mansions of Kanadukathan, a tile workshop, a weaving cooperative, and a Chettinad kitchen, which cooks the most complex food in the south.
Day 10: Chettinad to Thanjavur. Two hours. The Brihadeeswarar temple, built around 1010 by the Chola king Rajaraja I and still standing exactly as constructed, which is the single most impressive building on this itinerary. Then the palace bronze gallery.
Day 11: Thanjavur to Pondicherry. Four hours, broken at Gangaikonda Cholapuram and the great temple complex at Chidambaram.
Day 12: Pondicherry. The French quarter on foot at dawn, which is the only hour it is cool, the Sri Aurobindo ashram, and the afternoon at Auroville or on the beach road.
Day 13: Pondicherry to Mahabalipuram. Two hours up the coast. The Shore Temple and the Pancha Rathas, 7th century Pallava carvings cut from single boulders, best in the last hour of daylight.
Day 14: Departure. Ninety minutes to Chennai airport.
What is included
Accommodation with breakfast including a heritage mansion at Chettinad, a private air-conditioned car and English-speaking driver throughout, a private backwater boat with crew and full board, local guides at Kochi, Madurai, Chettinad, Thanjavur and Mahabalipuram, the tea estate walk, the Kathakali performance, all entries, a document with real driving hours, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our team on the ground.
Honest notes
The driving is real. Four days on this route are over four hours in a car, and southern roads are slow. We break every long leg with something worth stopping for, but if you dislike driving days, tell us and we will build the Kerala-only version instead: ten days, three hotel changes and no drive over four hours.
Alleppey and the houseboats. The backwaters are one of the best things in India and Alleppey, where most boats leave from, has become a traffic jam of several hundred of them, with the water quality to match. We use Kumarakom or a smaller village mooring, a boat with two or four cabins rather than eight, and one night rather than two, which is all anybody actually wants.
What we cut. Most southern itineraries put Periyar and Thekkady between Munnar and the coast. We leave it out. The tiger reserve boat trip is crowded, the wildlife is thin, and the spice plantation tour exists in a dozen better versions elsewhere on this route. If you want it, we will add it, and we will tell you what we think first.
Two monsoons. Kerala gets the heavy southwest monsoon from June to September and a second, gentler northeast monsoon that brings afternoon rain through October into November. December to March is the reliable window. Tamil Nadu’s heaviest rain arrives in that October to December period, later than the rest of India, which catches people out.
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