Munnar, Thekkady, the Backwaters & the Varkala Cliff — Six Nights

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 south along the ridge, around three and a half hours through cardamom country, to Kumily on the Tamil Nadu border. The afternoon is a working plantation walk — cardamom under shade, pepper on the trunks, clove, nutmeg and vanilla in among them — and the evening has the Kathakali and kalaripayattu performances in town, bought at the door. Periyar boat tickets for the morning are booked on the reserve's own system in advance rather than through the package.

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 to Kollam, about two and a half hours, for the thing a houseboat cannot do: a country canoe through the canals of Munroe Island, threaded between houses, coconut plots and low bridges, with stops for the coir yards and the fish traps in the shallows — two hours on the water, and a different backwater entirely from the one you slept on. Then the last hour and a half down to Varkala, arriving on the cliff for the light before sunset.

Morning on the cliff path and down to Papanasam beach, which is a working religious site as well as a beach — families come here to perform last rites, and it is walked quietly. Ayurvedic centres line the cliff; a consultation and a first treatment fill the afternoon if you want them, with the coast south to Kappil, where a backwater runs close to the sea, as the alternative. Swimming is between the flags only.

A last hour on the cliff before the drive to Trivandrum airport, about an hour and twenty minutes; a flight after midday is comfortable. For a later departure there is time in the city for the Padmanabhaswamy temple's gopuram from the tank — the temple admits Hindus only, with a strict dress code — or the Napier Museum.