Kerala Backwaters and Tea Hills

Met at Kochi airport and driven about 40 km into Fort Kochi, an hour with traffic. The afternoon is on foot: the cheena vala fishing nets being cranked down at Vasco da Gama Square, St Francis Church where Vasco da Gama was buried in 1524 before his remains went home to Lisbon, and the Ramayana murals inside Mattancherry Palace. At six, watch the actors paint their own faces green for an hour before the Kathakali begins. Malabar biryani afterwards.

Morning in Jew Town for the Paradesi Synagogue of 1568, floored with blue-and-white Chinese tiles of which no two are the same, then the pepper and cardamom warehouses on Bazaar Road where the smell does all the selling. Cross to Ernakulam on the public ferry for lunch and come back for an evening kalaripayattu bout, all coconut-oil lamps and flexible urumi swords. Dinner of appam and stew on a verandah.

Leave after breakfast for Munnar, 130 km and about four hours by the Neriamangalam road. Past Adimali the climb begins in earnest, with Cheeyappara and Valara falls stepping down the rock right beside the highway. By mid-afternoon every slope is clipped tea, the bushes shoulder-high and the pluckers moving in lines. Check in, then walk an estate path to the Attukad viewpoint for the last light and a mug of unblended estate tea.

An optional four o'clock jeep grinds up to Kolukkumalai, at roughly 2,100 metres the highest tea estate in the world, for sunrise and a look at its 1930s orthodox rolling machinery. Later, Eravikulam National Park below Anamudi, 2,695 metres and the highest peak in South India, where Nilgiri tahr wander past the shuttle road unbothered. Afternoon at the Tata Tea Museum in Nallathanni, then Mattupetty dam and the Echo Point road.

About 100 km and four hours to Kumily by way of Nedumkandam, through cardamom estates that scent the car whenever a window is open. Reach Thekkady for lunch and walk a spice smallholding: pepper vines climbing silver oaks, cardamom in the shade, nutmeg, clove and vanilla. At four, the Periyar lake boat, past the bleached stumps of forest drowned by the 1895 Mullaperiyar dam, with gaur and elephant often on the far shore.

Drive 140 km west to Alappuzha, around four hours, dropping out of the ghats into flat green paddy. Board a private kettuvallam at Punnamada near noon and push into the Kuttanad canals, past duck herders, coir yards and toddy shops on the bunds. Lunch is karimeen pollichathu, pearl spot rubbed with chilli and grilled inside a banana leaf, cooked on board. Moor at dusk beside a village church and eat under the stars.

Step off the boat after puttu and kadala curry, then drive about 160 km south on NH66 to Kovalam, three and a half hours, pausing at Varkala where red laterite cliffs drop straight to the sea and the tender coconuts are cold. The afternoon is free on Lighthouse Beach or given over to the first of two ayurvedic treatments. Sunset from the Vizhinjam lighthouse steps, then seafood chosen off the ice below.

Drive the 16 km into Thiruvananthapuram early for Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, where Vishnu reclines on the serpent Anantha and men enter bare-chested in a mundu. Next door, the teak and rosewood Kuthiramalika Palace with its 122 carved horses, then the striped Indo-Saracenic Napier Museum in its gardens. A full sadya on a banana leaf before the 15 km transfer to Trivandrum airport.