The Full Southern Coast — Madurai to Kovalam in Seven Nights

Into Madurai, laid out in concentric squares around Meenakshi Amman, and to the temple in the afternoon: fourteen gopurams thick with figures repainted on a twelve-year cycle, the golden lotus tank, and the hall where a thousand columns are each carved differently. The evening ceremony closes the temple — the god carried to the goddess behind drums and nadaswaram, the doors shut — and is worth waiting out to the end rather than leaving with the crowd.

South-east through dry country to the coast and across two kilometres of open sea onto the island. Ramanathaswamy takes the afternoon: the third corridor runs about twelve hundred metres, longer than any other in India, with individually carved granite piers and painted ceilings that only make sense at walking pace. The twenty-two theerthams are open through the day — an attendant draws each well and pours it over you, and you will finish completely soaked.

Dhanushkodi first, out along nineteen kilometres of narrowing spit to the point where the road stops between two seas. The town was destroyed by the December 1964 cyclone and never rebuilt; the church shell and railway fragments remain in the sand, and Kothandaramaswamy temple back along the road is the only building that survived. The afternoon covers Gandhamadhana Parvatham, the Kalam memorial and the shore, at the pace the heat permits.

The long coastal leg west, around six hours, broken at Suchindram for the Thanumalayan temple — a forty-metre gopuram and a set of columns that sound at different pitches when struck. Into Kanyakumari in time for the point before dusk, where the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean meet and the water carries three visibly different colours on a calm day. Sunset from the shore, and the two rocks lit offshore afterwards.

The sunrise the town exists for, clearest between October and March, and the ferry out to the Vivekananda Rock Memorial afterwards, built in 1970 where Vivekananda is said to have meditated in 1892, with the forty-one-metre Thiruvalluvar statue beside it. Then north-west across the state line to Padmanabhapuram, the old Travancore capital, whose palace is the largest wooden complex in Asia — carved rosewood ceilings, a black polished floor whose recipe is disputed, clerestory windows of coloured mica; it is closed on Mondays, so the day is placed accordingly. On to Poovar by late afternoon, about two and a half hours in all: where the Neyyar river meets the sea behind a sandbar, the resorts sit on the backwater and the golden beach is reached only by boat.

A morning on the Poovar backwater by boat — mangroves, the estuary and the sandbar beach with the Arabian Sea on the other side — then twenty minutes up the coast to the Kovalam headland. The afternoon is the beach: three crescent coves under a headland, with the 1972 lighthouse on the point and a climb up it for the view north. The fishing harbour at Vizhinjam just south is at its most interesting when the boats come in during the afternoon.

Nothing is scheduled, which after six days of temples and driving is the point rather than an omission. The options are the beach, an Ayurvedic treatment at one of the centres behind it, or nothing at all. Your specialist arranges a treatment in advance if it appeals; otherwise the day stays empty by design.

Twenty minutes to the airport, so the last morning is usable rather than lost. Padmanabhaswamy temple in the city admits only Hindu worshippers to the sanctum and enforces a strict dress code; the Napier Museum and the Kuthiramalika palace next to it are open to all and hold the Travancore collections, including the royal instruments and palanquins. Then the transfer for your flight.