Kerala Family Discovery

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 — ninety minutes, seated, and short enough for children — when elephant, gaur and sambar are still at the water and the drowned trunks of the 1895 reservoir stand out of the mist. 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, and every meal is cooked aboard; children generally take to it immediately.

Disembark after breakfast and drive south, about three hours, to Chadayamangalam and the Jatayu Earth's Center — the world's largest bird sculpture on a hilltop, reached by cable car, open daily from ten, with the park and the view taking a couple of hours. Then two hours on to the Kovalam headland below Trivandrum, arriving by late afternoon for the beach: three crescent coves under a laterite headland, with the 1972 lighthouse on the point.

Around two and a half hours south across the state line to Kanyakumari, with Padmanabhapuram Palace on the way — the finest timber palace in the south, closed on Mondays, so the day is placed accordingly. At the cape the ferry runs out to the Vivekananda Rock Memorial and the 133-foot Thiruvalluvar statue beside it; queues are shortest before noon and the boat is the part children remember. Sunset from the shore, where the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea meet, then back up the coast road to Kovalam.

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.