Best of Kerala Circuit

Met at Kochi airport or Ernakulam station and driven east without a night in the city, so the nights go where the landscape is. Coconut and paddy give way to rubber, then cardamom and pepper as the road climbs past Adimali, and finally tea. Around four hours, with the Cheeyappara and Valara falls beside the road on the way up — worth the stop when there is water behind them, which means the monsoon and the months after it. Munnar sits near 1,600 m and the evening is cold enough to want a layer; nothing is scheduled beyond arriving.

Eravikulam National Park at opening, by the timed shuttle from Rajamala, for the Nilgiri tahr — entry is capped daily and the park closes for calving, roughly February to March. Then straight out along the Mattupetty road while the sky is still clear: the dam, Echo Point, the Kundala lake and Top Station on the Tamil Nadu border, where the escarpment falls away into the Theni plain. Cloud usually closes that view by late morning, so it comes before lunch rather than after. Back to the Tea Museum at Nallathanni in the early afternoon; it is closed on Mondays, and a Monday here gives that hour to an estate walk instead.

Down out of the tea and across to Kumily on the Tamil Nadu border. A spice plantation walk in the afternoon — cardamom, pepper, vanilla and clove growing in the same few acres — and Kalaripayattu in the evening if you want it.

The first boat slot on Periyar lake, when elephant, gaur and sambar are still at the water and the drowned trunks of the 1895 reservoir stand out of the mist; later departures see materially less. Then west and down to Alappuzha, about four hours, to board the houseboat in the early afternoon — the boat holds the boarding. It works through the narrow canals and out onto open Vembanad water, moors before dark — none may move at night — and every meal is cooked aboard, karimeen in banana leaf if you ask.

Disembark after breakfast and drive south down the coast road, about four hours to the Kovalam headland below Trivandrum. The afternoon is the beach — three crescent coves under a laterite headland, with the 1972 lighthouse on the point and a walk up it for the view toward Vizhinjam. Ayurvedic centres line the road behind Lighthouse Beach if you want a consultation.

Nothing is required. Swimming is between the flags on Lighthouse Beach, the headland path links the three coves, and a treatment can fill the afternoon. If you would rather move, Kanyakumari is two and a half hours south and the cape, the rock memorial and the sunset make a full day of it — say so and the driver is booked.

The morning is the city, twenty minutes away: the Padmanabhaswamy temple's gopuram from the tank — the temple admits Hindus only, with a strict dress code — then the Napier Museum and the Kuthiramalika palace. Trivandrum airport is fifteen minutes on, which makes even a midday flight comfortable.