Pondicherry and Kerala Honeymoon Tour

Long-haul flights into Chennai tend to land in the small hours, so the first day starts gently. Our airport representative waits beyond customs with a sign bearing both your names, walks you to the car and hands you a folder holding your vouchers, our local phone numbers and a printed copy of the route. Reaching your hotel in south Chennai takes about forty minutes at that hour. We hold the room from arrival when you share your flight number, which means sleep comes first and nobody waits in a lobby for the afternoon check-in.

Wake when you like, order a late breakfast and let the day pass slowly by the pool. Chennai stays warm in almost every month, and the hours between noon and four are best spent indoors with a cold drink and a nap. Feeling restless? Ask the driver for a nearby café for your first proper filter coffee, poured from a height between a steel tumbler and a small bowl to cool it and raise a froth. There is no guide booked today and nothing on the clock, which is exactly how the first day of a honeymoon should feel.

Around five your driver takes you to Besant Nagar, a leafy residential district on the southern edge of the city, where Elliot's Beach is cleaner and calmer than the more famous Marina further north. Walk barefoot along the waterline as local couples, joggers and families come out for the sea breeze, and stop at the small whitewashed Karl Schmidt Memorial, built in honor of a Dutch sailor who drowned saving a swimmer here. The streets behind the beach are full of small restaurants, and your driver can recommend one for grilled fish or a crisp dosa before the drive back. Overnight in Chennai.

The East Coast Road leaves Chennai behind quickly, and within half an hour the city gives way to casuarina plantations, prawn farms and long glimpses of the Bay of Bengal. Once breakfast is done, the car heads down the coast to Mahabalipuram, a seaside town that was the main harbor of the Pallava kings some thirteen centuries ago. Your room today is at a beach resort a short distance from the monuments, with a pool facing the sand and loungers under the palms. Arrive by late morning, have lunch on the terrace and let the hottest part of the day go by in the shade.

Instead of the usual early start, we time your guided visit for the softer late-afternoon light, which turns the granite a warm honey color and keeps the heat bearable. The tour begins at the Five Rathas, monolithic shrines carved from a single long outcrop of rock and never actually consecrated, so your guide can explain how the sculptors were testing temple designs that later spread across the south. You then walk past the huge relief often called Arjuna's Penance, where a crowd of gods, sages, hunters and animals gathers around a natural cleft in the rock that once carried water down like a river.

The visit ends at the Shore Temple as the sun drops behind it, the best time of day to stand on the lawn and watch the light fade on its weathered towers. The temple is one of the oldest structural stone temples in South India, and a breakwater now protects it from the waves that have worn its carvings smooth. Afterwards, the fishing village behind the beach is a short stroll away, and a seafood restaurant on the sand can grill the day's catch for a simple dinner with the sound of the surf right beside your table. Overnight in Mahabalipuram.

If you are up at first light, stroll onto the sand below the resort, where wooden catamarans nose ashore and the catch being sorted on the sand, a busy, noisy scene that lasts only an hour or so after dawn. A short hop north after breakfast reaches Saluvankuppam and its Tiger Cave, a rock-cut shrine with a crown of snarling yali faces carved around its doorway. It is quieter than the main monuments and rarely crowded, with a grassy area facing the sea that lets you take pictures together with nobody else wandering into view.

The road south toward Pondicherry runs past salt pans, coconut groves and fishing hamlets with brightly painted boats pulled up on the sand. Your driver can stop at Alamparai Fort, the crumbling brick remains of an old coastal fort beside a backwater inlet, which is a pleasant twenty-minute detour if you enjoy ruins with almost nobody around. Without detours, plan on two and a half hours behind the wheel. Lunch can be at a roadside restaurant serving Tamil meals on banana leaves, or you can wait for the cafés of Pondicherry, which you reach by early afternoon.

Three nights are booked at a boutique heritage hotel in or near White Town, many of which occupy restored colonial houses with shuttered windows, wooden staircases and courtyards shaded by frangipani. We request a quiet room facing the courtyard or garden, and an upgrade where one is available. As the evening cools, walk to the Promenade, the seafront road along Goubert Avenue, which closes to vehicles in the evening so that families, couples and joggers can take over the tarmac. Dinner tonight is at your own choice from dozens of small restaurants nearby. Overnight in Pondicherry.

Bicycles are the best way to see the French Quarter, and the quietest hour is just after sunrise, before the delivery vans and scooters arrive. A cycling guide waits at the gate with a pair of sturdy bikes and leads a gentle hour-long loop through the grid of seafront streets, stopping to explain the history behind the old villas, the French street names and the canal that once divided the European and Tamil sides of town. The roads are flat and the pace is easy, so even occasional cyclists manage comfortably. A bakery stop for croissants and coffee ends the ride.

After breakfast and a rest, your driver takes you about eight kilometers south to the boathouse at Chunnambar, where a private motorboat waits for the two of you. The ride along the backwater estuary takes around twenty minutes, past mangroves, egrets and fishermen casting nets from small canoes, before you land on a long sandbar between the river mouth and the open sea known as Plage Paradis. The beach is wide, clean and lined with a few simple shelters, and you can spend a couple of hours walking, reading or paddling at the edge. The sea can be rough here, so swimming is best kept to the shallows.

Back in town by mid-afternoon, there is time to rest before an evening walk through the Tamil Quarter, the older Indian side of town, where townhouses have deep front verandas, carved wooden pillars and narrow inner courtyards. The contrast with the French side is clear within a few streets. Your guide can point out the Manakula Vinayagar Temple, a busy Ganesha shrine with painted walls, and the market area nearby where flower sellers string jasmine for the evening. The night is free for dinner at a Creole restaurant or a quiet table in your hotel courtyard. Overnight in Pondicherry.

Sleep in today, because the morning has nothing scheduled until ten. After a late breakfast your driver takes you about twelve kilometers north to Auroville, a township begun in 1968 whose residents come from many nations and live, work and farm on land that was once eroded scrubland. At the visitor center a short film and a small exhibition explain the founding ideas, and a shaded path of about a kilometer winds through young forest until the Matrimandir comes into view, a golden sphere that sits at the center of the community. Going inside the meditation chamber is possible only with a separate booking made in advance, and slots are few.

Lunch is at one of the Auroville cafés near the visitor center, where much of the food comes from the township's own farms, followed by a hands-on pottery session for two at a studio in the area. The potters teach you to center clay on the wheel and shape a simple bowl or cup, and although first attempts often wobble, the session is relaxed, a little messy and usually full of laughter. Your pieces need to be dried and fired, so most studios keep them or ship them on request. The afternoon also leaves time to browse the township's boutiques for handmade paper, incense and cotton clothing.

On your last evening in town we book you a corner table on a White Town roof terrace, high enough to catch the sea breeze and look out over the tiled roofs and church towers as the lights come on. The menu at most rooftop places mixes French dishes such as fish in white wine sauce with Tamil and Creole plates, and a few of them serve wine and cocktails, which are harder to find in other parts of Tamil Nadu. Afterwards, walk the few minutes down to the seafront for one more look at the Promenade at night. Overnight in Pondicherry.

The second half of the honeymoon begins with a travel day. After breakfast you leave Pondicherry and drive north on the East Coast Road to Chennai International Airport, a run of about three and a half hours that your driver plans around your flight time with a comfortable margin for city traffic. The domestic flight to Kochi takes around an hour and fifteen minutes and crosses the whole width of the peninsula, from the flat, dry coast of Tamil Nadu to the green and palm-fringed shore of Kerala on the Arabian Sea.

At Cochin International Airport our Kerala driver is waiting in the arrivals hall, and the road to Fort Kochi, roughly ninety minutes, runs through the suburbs and over the bridges of the harbor islands. Your hotel here is a converted colonial building or a small boutique property within walking distance of the waterfront. Check in, freshen up and take an easy evening stroll to the seafront, where the big Chinese fishing nets lean out over the water in silhouette against the last of the light and street stalls fry fresh sardines for passers-by. Overnight in Kochi.

Fort Kochi rewards slow walking, and your guide meets you mid-morning for a route through its quiet streets of Portuguese, Dutch and British buildings. You stop at St. Francis Church, whose floor held the grave of Vasco da Gama for some years before his remains were returned to Lisbon, and at the old Dutch cemetery with its weathered gravestones. Between the sights your guide points out the trading houses where pepper, the spice that first drew European ships to this coast, was weighed and packed for export. The walk is shaded and flat, and there are many cafés along the way for a cold lime soda.

Lunch over, you ride across to Mattancherry, where the Dutch Palace holds wall murals of scenes from the Ramayana painted in deep reds, ochres and greens, and to Jew Town, whose small Paradesi Synagogue dates from the 16th century. A scheduling note: Friday is a closed day for the palace, and the synagogue also locks its doors on Saturdays and Jewish festivals, so the order of visits follows your calendar. The lanes nearby are lined with antique dealers and ginger warehouses, and you can watch workers spreading dried ginger on the floor while the spice smell hangs in the air. A boutique or two sells handloom textiles.

In the late afternoon a private sailboat or small motor launch takes you out into Kochi harbor for a sunset cruise of about ninety minutes. You glide past Vypeen island, the container terminal, fishing boats returning home and, if you are lucky, a few dolphins that sometimes surface near the harbor mouth. The sun drops into the Arabian Sea behind the fishing nets, and by the time you step off at the jetty the waterfront lamps are glowing. Dinner is at a garden restaurant in Fort Kochi, where karimeen pollichathu, pearl spot fish wrapped and cooked in banana leaf, is the dish to order. Overnight in Kochi.

Leaving the coast after breakfast, the road to Munnar runs first through rubber plantations and pineapple farms, then begins to climb into the Western Ghats past Kothamangalam. The landscape changes slowly, with thick forest giving way to cardamom and pepper gardens and, near the top, the first neat rows of tea bushes. Your driver stops at the Cheeyappara Falls, a stepped waterfall beside the highway that runs strongest from August to October, and later at a spice garden near Adimali, where a short guided walk shows you how pepper, cardamom, nutmeg and vanilla grow on the plant.

By early afternoon you reach your tea estate resort, set on a hillside above the town with views across slopes that tea planters cleared and planted in the late 19th century. The air up here is cool, often around 15 to 22 degrees during the day and cooler at night, which comes as a welcome change after the coast. We request a valley-facing room or cottage with a private balcony, so you can sit outside with cups of estate-grown tea and watch the clouds roll across the hills. Nothing else is planned before evening, and many resorts here offer a heated pool or a fireplace.

Before dinner, take a short walk with a resort naturalist along the edge of the estate, where the paths wind between tea bushes and silver oak trees planted for shade. The naturalist explains why pickers pluck just the tender tip of each shoot, how the estate grades its tea and which birds you are hearing at dusk, from the Malabar whistling thrush to the noisy jungle babblers. Staying in is easy too, since dinner is usually served near a log fire, with lacy appam and coconut stew offered alongside continental options. Overnight in Munnar.

An alarm at four sounds harsh on a honeymoon, but the reward is worth it. A local four-wheel-drive jeep collects you before dawn for the rough climb to Kolukkumalai, a tea estate on the Tamil Nadu border at roughly 2,000 meters, counted among the highest tea plantations anywhere. The last stretch is a bumpy track of loose stones, so hold on tight. At the top you stand above a sea of clouds filling the valleys below, and as the sun rises the mist slowly clears to show the ridges of the Western Ghats one after another.

The estate still runs an old tea factory where much of the processing is done with machines that date back decades, and a short tour shows you the withering, rolling, fermenting and drying stages that turn green leaves into black tea. You taste a few grades at the end, and small packs make good gifts to carry home. The jeep brings you back down to Munnar for a late breakfast at the resort. There is plenty of time afterwards for a nap, a book on the balcony or a gentle walk through the estate paths below your room before lunch.

In the afternoon you return to your resort spa for a couple's Ayurveda massage, booked for the two of you side by side in the same treatment room. Ayurveda has deep roots in Kerala, and the classic full-body abhyangam massage uses warm herbal oils prepared to traditional recipes, followed by a steam bath and time to rest with a cup of herbal tea. Let the therapist know about any health conditions beforehand. The evening is free, and the resort can set up a quiet table on the lawn or the terrace under the stars if the weather is clear. Overnight in Munnar.

Today starts early, with breakfast at seven and departure soon after, so that you reach the backwaters in time for the houseboat boarding around midday. The road winds down from the hills through Neriamangalam, where the Periyar river runs below a long stone bridge, and then flattens out across central Kerala's towns and paddy country. Your driver knows the coffee stops along the way, and the trip takes roughly five hours. At the jetty in Alleppey your private houseboat crew is waiting, and they help you board with your bags while the captain explains the plan for the day.

The boat is a one-bedroom private houseboat, so the whole deck, lounge and bedroom are reserved only for the two of you, with a three-man crew of captain, cook and helper who keep a discreet distance. Lunch comes to the table while you glide onto Vembanad Lake, a wide sheet of water stretching toward Kumarakom, and the menu usually includes fish curry with red rice, cabbage thoran, a crisp papadam and fresh fruit. The afternoon cruise turns off the open water into the narrower canals of Kuttanad, where you pass village churches, small temples, coir workers and lines of coconut palms bending over the water.

Under local rules houseboats must stop cruising and moor by early evening, and your captain picks a quiet spot beside a paddy field or a village embankment. We ask the crew to decorate the bedroom with flowers and to serve dinner on the upper deck by lantern light, with prawns or chicken roasted in Kerala spices and a sweet coconut payasam to finish. Later, lie back on the deck to watch the stars, which shine brightly here away from city lights, while frogs and crickets fill the silence and the odd fisherman paddles home. Overnight on the houseboat.

Your last morning starts with a short cruise in the early light, when kingfishers dart over the water and villagers take their canoes out to work. A Kerala breakfast of puttu, steamed rice cake layered with grated coconut, or soft dosas with chutney is served on deck as the boat heads back toward the jetty. Checkout from the houseboat is usually around nine, and the crew help carry your luggage to the car. If they looked after you well, a tip handed to the captain for the whole crew is customary and much appreciated.

Allow around two hours by road up to Cochin International Airport, with the start time set by your flight. If you leave late in the evening, ask us about a day-use room by the airport or a bonus beach night at Marari. From the Tamil coast to the Kerala hills and backwaters, you have seen two very different sides of South India together, so when the first anniversary nears, write to us and we will map out round two. Safe travels home.