Kerala, India

Kerala: One State, Several Completely Different Landscapes

Kerala runs 580 kilometres along the southwest coast of India and covers everything from the Arabian Sea backwaters at sea level to the Cardamom Hills at 2,695 metres. The climate at the coast and the climate in Munnar are nothing alike. Most visitors spend their entire trip in two of these zones; the interesting choice is which two.

Kochi (Fort Cochin)

The old Portuguese-Dutch-British port district of Fort Cochin is the entry point for most visitors and a good place to spend two or three days. The Chinese fishing nets on the seafront date from the 14th century - huge cantilevered structures lowered by counterweights, still operated by small teams every evening. They are photogenic but produce very little fish at this point.

The Mattancherry area (Jew Town) has the 16th-century Paradesi Synagogue, still an active congregation of a few dozen families. Entry is INR 10. The antique shops along the lane outside are worth browsing even if you are not buying; the density of Dutch and Portuguese colonial objects is unusual.

Kerala Kathakali Centre does evening performances with a 45-minute make-up demonstration before the show, starting around 6pm. The make-up alone is worth seeing - it takes two hours to apply in the traditional context. The performance is a condensed excerpt rather than a complete story; realistic for a tourist audience, less so for anyone wanting the full five-hour version.

Fort Cochin itself is a neighbourhood of Dutch-era bungalows and tree-shaded lanes that still functions as a real place rather than purely a tourist attraction. Walk it at 7am before the day heats up.

The Backwaters: Alleppey (Alappuzha)

The Kerala backwaters are a 900-kilometre network of canals, lakes, and rivers running parallel to the coast, separated from the sea by a narrow strip of land. Alleppey is the main access point and the most popular base for houseboat rentals.

A typical houseboat (kettuvallam) rental covers one night on the water, moving through the canals south of Alleppey with a captain and cook. The price varies from around INR 8,000 for a budget boat to INR 25,000 for a premium vessel with air conditioning and proper beds. The cook prepares meals from fresh ingredients bought at village markets along the route. This experience, done properly, is excellent.

The problem is that the main channels near Alleppey have traffic - dozens of houseboats moving in convoy is not a backwater idyll. For quieter water, ask operators specifically about routes south toward Kumarakom or north toward Champakulam, where tourist boat density drops considerably.

Munnar: Tea Country

Munnar sits at 1,600 metres in the Western Ghats, roughly three hours from Kochi by road (the road from the plains climbs sharply through hairpin bends for the final hour). The tea plantations cover the hillsides in geometric rows, interrupted by cardamom gardens and shola forest reserves on the upper slopes.

The Eravikulam National Park is 15 kilometres from Munnar town and protects the Nilgiri Tahr, a mountain goat found nowhere else. Entry costs INR 100 per person. The grassland walk through the park offers a good chance of seeing Tahr herds on the slopes; the rainy season (June to August) closes the park. The park is also one of the few places where the Neelakurinji flower (Strobilanthes kunthiana) blooms - a mass flowering event that happens once every twelve years. The next is expected around 2030.

Tea estates throughout Munnar offer factory tours (Tata Tea, KDHP) for around INR 200 that explain the withering, rolling, and drying process. The tasting at the end is the useful part; the green tea from the Munnar region is notably different from the standard CTC (cut, tear, curl) versions sold commercially.

Thekkady and Periyar

Periyar National Park at Thekkady is built around an artificial lake created in 1895. The boat safaris on the lake are the standard activity, offering a chance to see elephants, gaur (Indian bison), and sambar deer at the water’s edge. Morning departures have better sightings. The trekking options inside the park (with mandatory rangers) get you further from the tourist areas and closer to actual wildlife behaviour.

The spice gardens around Kumily (the village adjacent to Thekkady) grow cardamom, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla. Several offer guided tours for around INR 200 that are more educational than they sound; the Indian spice trade shaped global history for 2,000 years and the context makes the plants more interesting.

What to Eat

Sadya is the Kerala feast served on a banana leaf at weddings, temple festivals, and in dedicated restaurants on Sundays. The standard version has rice, two types of parippu (lentil curry), rasam, sambar, up to a dozen small vegetable preparations (thoran, olan, avial), and payasam (rice pudding) for dessert. Everything is vegetarian. The technique for eating it correctly involves mixing with your right hand; watching the person next to you is the easiest instruction.

Appam with chicken stew is the most satisfying breakfast in Kerala: a lacy rice flour pancake crispy at the edges and soft in the centre, with a coconut milk stew that is nothing like North Indian curry.

Karimeen pollichathu (pearl spot fish wrapped in banana leaf and grilled) is the regional fish speciality. Best around Alleppey where the fish comes directly from the backwaters.

For a proper Kochi lunch, Kashi Art Cafe in Fort Cochin is pleasant and does a short menu well. More authentic but harder to find: the small toddy shops (kallu shaap) in the village areas serve fish curry with tapioca, the staple inland meal, for around INR 150.

When to Go

October to February is the dry window on the coast. March through May is hot and increasingly humid. The monsoon arrives in June and transforms the landscape - the Western Ghats are genuinely spectacular in rainfall, the tea estates are vividly green, and some areas (particularly Wayanad) see tourism drop by 80 percent. If you do not mind rain and occasional road closures, the monsoon months (June to August) have a Kerala almost entirely to themselves. Accommodation prices drop significantly.

Getting There

Kochi International Airport (COK) has direct flights from the Gulf states (large Keralite diaspora), Singapore, and several European cities. Connecting flights from Delhi or Mumbai add two hours. The airport is 30 kilometres northeast of Fort Cochin; prepaid taxis cost around INR 800 to 1,000.