Kerala Tour from Kochi

Cochin International Airport lies near Nedumbassery, north of the city, and the ride to Fort Kochi at the tip of the peninsula usually takes an hour and a half, longer when office traffic peaks. Someone from our Kochi office is at the exit gate with a sign, and the car is already cooled when you step in. The drive crosses the commercial heart of Ernakulam and then a chain of bridges over the harbor, and by the time you see the first wooden warehouses and rain trees you have left modern India behind for a much older trading town.

Check-in is generally from early afternoon, so if you arrive in the morning a light lunch of appam and vegetable stew is a good way to bridge the gap. When you are ready, your guide collects you downstairs for a relaxed stroll of about an hour. You pass Vasco da Gama Square, the open-air seafood stalls and the long row of Chinese fishing nets on the beach road. Rather than just photographing them, stand by one net for a full cycle: you will see the crew walk out along the beam, the counterweight stones rise, and the dripping mesh lift from the water.

Near the nets is the old Dhobi Khana, a public laundry where families of washermen have scrubbed, beaten and ironed the town's linen by hand for generations; if the workers agree, you can look around the drying lines. As evening falls, the waterfront fills with local couples and street vendors frying banana chips in huge woks. For dinner, order karimeen pollichathu: a whole backwater fish smothered in onion-chili masala, parceled in leaf and seared on a griddle. Get a good sleep, because tomorrow covers four centuries of history on foot. Overnight in Kochi.

Morning is the coolest time to walk, so your guide picks you up soon after breakfast for a heritage loop through the Fort Kochi grid. First comes St. Francis Church; a slab set into its floor marks covering the spot where the Portuguese admiral was laid after his death here in 1524, before his bones sailed back to Lisbon, then wander down Princess Street, past a walled Dutch graveyard and along the colonial houses of Burgher Street. The guide explains which buildings date from Portuguese, Dutch or British rule, and why the local Anglo-Indian, Konkani, Gujarati and Jewish communities ended up living side by side on such a small piece of land.

Next, hop in the car for the short ride over to Mattancherry. Inside the palace the Portuguese gave the Raja of Kochi, bedroom and coronation-hall walls glow with Krishna legends and episodes of Rama's exile, rendered in earthy red, yellow ochre and leaf green. Next door, a narrow lane through Jew Town ends at the Paradesi Synagogue, known for its clock tower, brass pulpit and hand-painted floor tiles from Canton. One scheduling note matters here. The palace locks its doors every Friday, and the synagogue stays shut Fridays, Saturdays and on Jewish festival days. If your dates clash, we simply swap this morning with tomorrow's free time or reschedule within the stay.

The afternoon is unhurried. Browse the spice wholesalers of Bazaar Road, where pepper sacks are still weighed on old scales, or rest at your hotel through the hottest hours. Around five you go to a small theater for Kathakali. Come early enough to see the actors lie on the floor as a make-up artist layers stiff white paper frames along their jaws, a detail that gives the characters their sculpted look. The show itself is a condensed scene, so it lasts about an hour, and a narrator introduces each gesture before the drums start. Overnight in Kochi.

Today allows a lazy morning. Once you have finished breakfast you leave the island town and head north on the national highway past Aluva and Angamaly, then turn east at Chalakudy onto a quieter road that follows the Chalakudy River upstream. Rubber estates and oil palm plantations line the way before the forest begins. Your driver will check in at the forest department checkpoint, since this stretch lies inside protected woodland and plastic is restricted, and you reach your riverside resort near Athirappilly as lunch is being laid out, and rooms usually overlook the water.

In the afternoon you walk down to the Athirappilly Waterfalls, where the river drops about 25 meters in several broad channels over a rock shelf. From the ticket gate a paved walkway runs to the lip of the falls, while a steeper, stepped trail drops toward the pool below, where spray drenches the boulders. The volume depends heavily on the season: in August and September the falls thunder across their full width, while by March they shrink to a few strong streams. Either way, the walk back up takes some effort, so pace yourself.

A few kilometers further upstream you stop at Vazhachal Falls, a wider and gentler set of cascades, and then at Charpa Falls, which tumbles right beside the road in the wet months. This forest belt is one of the better birding areas in central Kerala, and hornbills are sometimes seen in the tall trees around the river, although nobody can promise you a sighting. At the resort, find a chair on the riverbank at dusk and listen to the falls in the distance. The evening is quiet, with simple Kerala meals served on the property. Overnight in Athirappilly.

Today you trade river forest for tea country. The car leaves around eight and works its way back to the highway, then east through Perumbavoor and Kothamangalam, two busy market towns on the edge of the hills. Beyond the long bridge at Neriamangalam, the road starts to rise in a series of turns through dense forest and cardamom groves. This is the classic old route to Munnar, and the scenery changes noticeably with every few hundred meters of altitude: tall teak and bamboo give way to wild pepper vines, tree ferns before the earliest tea terraces appear.

Two waterfalls sit right on this road. Cheeyappara Falls drops in seven steps down the hillside next to a sharp bend, and a short distance further, Valara Falls shows itself on the far side of the gorge. Both are at their best in and just after the monsoon. Your driver will also stop at a spice shop in Adimali, where you can taste cardamom and pepper straight from the pod and pick up vanilla or cocoa. Midday food comes from a no-frills highway canteen, where rice plates with three curries cost very little and chapati with egg roast is the fallback for milder palates.

Mid-afternoon brings you into Munnar, roughly 1,600 meters up, where the three mountain streams that give the town its name come together. The air is cool, and you may want a light sweater after dark, especially between December and February. Your hotel is either a planter-style resort among the bushes or a valley-view property away from the crowded bazaar. Later, if the weather allows, take a short walk along a tea-picking path behind the property to watch the pickers finish their shift and carry their sacks to the weighing shed. Dinner tonight is served where you stay. Overnight in Munnar.

An early start helps at Eravikulam National Park, because the queue for the forest department bus to Rajamala builds through the morning. Rolling grassland and patches of shola woodland climb toward Anamudi, whose summit tops every other point in peninsular India, and these slopes shelter the biggest remaining population of Nilgiri tahr, a chunky brown cliff-dwelling ungulate restricted to this one mountain chain. Tahr often graze close to the walking road, yet as with any wild animal they cannot be guaranteed. Rangers close the park to visitors for a stretch of late winter, usually spanning parts of February and March, so the newborn kids are left alone, so we confirm the opening before your trip.

Before lunch, stop at the KDHP Tea Museum, which traces how planting spread across the High Ranges since the late 1800s, from early Scottish managers and narrow-gauge railways to the workers' cooperative that runs many estates today. A short film is followed by a walk through a small processing unit, where fresh green leaf goes through rolling, oxidation and drying before it becomes ordinary black tea. Ask the staff why orthodox leaf and CTC granules taste so different, then pick up a few packs at the counter, as prices are fair and the tea is fresh.

After lunch, the road toward Top Station takes you to Mattupetty Dam, where the reservoir sits in a basin of tea slopes and eucalyptus. Boating is available here, and a short way on, the Echo Point lakeside is popular with Indian families calling out over the lake and waiting for the reply off the hills. If the sky is clear and you have energy, your driver can continue to Top Station near the Tamil Nadu border for views over the plains far below, though cloud often rolls in by afternoon. Expect to be back in town before dark. Overnight in Munnar.

Breakfast is followed by a drive south along the spine of the hills. The route passes Anayirangal reservoir and then the small towns of Poopara and Rajakkad before entering the Cardamom Hills, where the shade of tall forest trees shelters endless rows of cardamom plants. Watch for women sorting the green pods on mats beside the road, and for small auction houses where buyers bid for the spice by the lot. Every few kilometers a lookout opens up over the valleys, and your driver knows where it is safe to stop for photographs.

Lunch is in Thekkady, at a jungle-fringe resort near Kumily, the small town pressed up against the boundary fence of the Periyar Tiger Reserve. Expect monkeys on the roof and plenty of birdsong. The reserve covers a large area of hill forest around an artificial lake, created when the Mullaperiyar Dam was completed in 1895 to divert water east into Tamil Nadu. Your guide explains how a British engineer pushed the project through against huge odds, and how the flooded valley later became one of India's early tiger reserves. Rest at the resort until the plantation walk later in the day.

Later, a local guide leads you around a family-owned spice plantation on the edge of town. You see black pepper vines trained up trees, nutmeg with its red mace wrapped around the seed, cinnamon bark being peeled, clove buds, allspice and coffee, and the owner explains how prices for each crop rise and fall through the year. At dusk you attend a Kalaripayattu demonstration, Kerala's centuries-old fighting system, in which teenage students vault, tumble and duel with long staffs, short daggers, swords and round shields inside a small earthen pit ringed by flickering oil lamps. Overnight in Thekkady.

The first boat of the day on Periyar Lake leaves soon after sunrise and is usually the calmest and coolest, so you head to the Thekkady boat landing early with your guide. Seats go to whoever is in line first, so in the busy months your guide joins the queue long before the ticket window lifts its shutter. The boat cruises for about 90 minutes past drowned tree stumps sticking out of the water and grassy banks where gaur, sambar deer, wild boar and now and then a small elephant family pick their way to the shallows. Birds such as cormorants, darters and kingfishers are easier to spot. Wildlife is never guaranteed, but the scenery alone justifies the trip.

After breakfast you can choose a guided activity run by the forest department's community eco-tourism program, which employs local people, many of them from former forest-dependent families. A short nature walk with an armed guard covers a few kilometers of trail and teaches you how to read tracks and droppings, while the longer bamboo rafting trip takes most of the day and needs advance booking. If you would rather keep things gentle, a jeep drive to the viewpoints at Chellarkovil, close to the Tamil Nadu border, shows you the plains and windmills spread out far below.

In the afternoon, take a stroll through Kumily's main road, where shops sell spices, tea, essential oils, wooden handicrafts and Kashmiri shawls brought down by traders from the north. A simple home-style cooking session with a local family can also be arranged, where you learn a sour fish curry soured with kudampuli and a vegetable thoran with grated coconut. Ayurvedic massage centers are everywhere in town, so this is also a good day to try a traditional oil treatment. Pack before bed, since tomorrow begins early, and settle the spa bill so checkout is quick in the morning. Overnight in Thekkady.

An early departure, around half past seven, brings you down from the hills in time for the houseboat. The road passes Vandiperiyar and Peermade, with a final look at the tea estates, then descends through rubber country to Mundakayam and the old Syrian Christian town of Kottayam. From there the land flattens into a waterlogged world of canals and paddy fields, and the coconut palms crowd closer to the road. Your driver may suggest a quick coffee halt in Kottayam town, known as the home of Kerala's first printing press and its oldest newspapers. You reach the jetty in Alleppey around noon, which is when houseboats normally take on guests, and the deckhand lifts your cases on board.

Your private Alleppey houseboat is built on the traditional kettuvallam pattern, with a hull of jackwood planks once stitched together with coir rope instead of nails. Modern versions add air-conditioned bedrooms, an attached bathroom and an open sitting deck at the front, with cane chairs facing the water. A cooked lunch reaches the table not long after the mooring ropes come in. As you head into the Kuttanad region, look for the narrow snake boats stored in long sheds, used each August for the famous boat races, and for the low-lying paddy plots protected from the lake by mud embankments called bunds.

Late afternoon, the cook may stop at a canal-side shop so you can choose prawns or fish for dinner. Houseboats are required to stop moving at about sunset, so the crew ties up near a village and you can walk the bund for a while as farmers return home and church bells ring across the water. Evening tea comes with banana fritters, followed by a dinner of rice, curries, fried fish and pickles. Mosquito nets and coils are provided, and the bedroom air conditioner runs from dusk until morning. Overnight on the houseboat.

Set an alarm for dawn: the backwaters at first light bring kingfishers, egrets and fishermen checking their nets. The cook lays out breakfast while the boat motors home, and by about nine your feet are on dry land again. Reaching Cochin International Airport by road means roughly 85 km and a little over two hours, more if Ernakulam is congested, and we plan the departure time with a generous buffer. Night flyers can rest for a few hours at a beach resort in Marari or in an airport-side hotel room booked for the day, for an extra charge.

Your loop is now complete: a colonial port, a forest waterfall, misty tea slopes, a spice-scented tiger reserve and a night on the water, all within a few hours of the same runway. For a return visit, consider Varkala's cliffs, the great temples of Madurai and Thanjavur, or the Theyyam shrines up north near Kannur. Thank you for choosing this Kerala round trip, and we hope to welcome you again.