Kovalam

Kovalam is three crescent bays separated by rocky headlands, sixteen kilometres from Thiruvananthapuram, and it has been receiving outsiders since the Travancore royal family built Halcyon Castle above the water in the 1930s and the overland travellers of the 1970s found the fishermen's coves. Lighthouse Beach, the southernmost and busiest, is named for the red-and-white striped Vizhinjam lighthouse on Kurumkal hill; climb its spiral stair in the late afternoon for a view down the whole coast to the harbour cranes. Hawah Beach next door still has catamaran crews hauling shore-seine nets in at dawn, a rope line of twenty men walking backwards up the sand, chanting to keep time.

Samudra, to the north, is quieter and better for a swim. The town's other trade is Ayurveda, and a proper fourteen or twenty-one day panchakarma course here is a medical undertaking rather than a spa treatment, though a single abhyanga massage makes an easy introduction. Use the beach as a base and give one day to the capital: Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple, where Vishnu reclines in gold and the dress code is strict, the polychrome Napier Museum, Kuthiramalika palace with its carved wooden horses, and the banana chips and halwa of Chalai Bazaar.

Poovar, where a river, a lagoon and the sea meet behind a sandbar, is thirty minutes south.