South Kerala — Thiruvananthapuram, Kovalam, Varkala, Kollam
The southern reach of the state is dominated by the city of Thiruvananthapuram, capital of Kerala and the seat of the former Travancore royal family. The city is built around the Padmanabhaswamy Temple — the great reclining-Vishnu shrine described elsewhere on this site — and its layout still reflects the temple-town logic of the eighteenth century, with concentric streets of shops, residential quarters, and royal-grant brahmin agraharam settlements radiating out from the central enclosure. The Napier Museum, the adjacent Sri Chitra Art Gallery, the Kuthiramalika Palace Museum (with its remarkable collection of carved horses on the eaves and royal manuscripts in the interior), and the Zoological Gardens — one of the oldest in Asia — together fill an unhurried day of city sightseeing.
Twelve kilometres south of Thiruvananthapuram, the beach resort of Kovalam — three crescent-shaped coves separated by laterite headlands — was Kerala's first international tourist destination, popularised by European travellers from the late 1960s onwards. The lighthouse beach is the most developed; Hawah Beach immediately to the north remains quieter and more residential. Forty kilometres further north along the coast, Varkala offers a strikingly different setting: a 25-kilometre-long laterite cliff drops vertically to the Arabian Sea, with mineral springs emerging at the base and a strip of small clifftop cafés and yoga shalas above. Varkala is the only place on the western Indian coast where high cliffs meet the sea, and the geology — visible in the bright red exposed laterite — is part of the appeal.
Kollam, at the southern end of the backwater network, was one of the great medieval port cities of the Malabar Coast and is now best used as the southern terminus of the eight-hour public ferry to Alappuzha across Ashtamudi and Vembanad lakes. The city itself is unhurried and contains a small but fine Portuguese-Dutch colonial centre around the Chinnakada clock tower.
Central Kerala — Kochi, Alleppey, Kumarakom, Thrissur, Munnar
Kochi is the commercial capital of the state and the natural base for most first-time visits to Kerala. The contemporary city is large and unsentimental, but its historic core — Fort Kochi, on the southern arm of the harbour entrance, with the adjoining quarters of Mattancherry and Jew Town — remains one of the most atmospheric concentrations of pre-twentieth-century coastal architecture anywhere in India. Within a few hundred metres are the Chinese fishing nets along the harbour-front promenade; the St Francis Church (built 1503, the oldest European church in India and the original burial place of Vasco da Gama); the Mattancherry Palace (a Portuguese-built royal residence with the finest sequence of Keralan murals extant); the Paradesi Synagogue (1568); and the Pardesi Spice Market in Mattancherry where pepper, cardamom, ginger, and cinnamon are still sold in commercial quantities along narrow alleys whose layout has not changed in four hundred years. Fort Kochi is comfortably explored in two days of unhurried walking.
South of Kochi, Alappuzha (Alleppey) is the gateway to the central backwaters; it is treated in detail on the Backwaters page of this guide. Kumarakom, on the eastern shore of Vembanad Lake, offers an alternative starting point with the additional draw of the bird sanctuary.
Sixty kilometres north of Kochi, Thrissur is the cultural capital of Kerala — the seat of the Sahitya Akademi, the Sangeetha Nataka Akademi, the Lalithakala Akademi, and the principal training schools for Kathakali and the other classical arts. The city itself is built around the Vadakkunnathan Temple and its great open ground (the Thekkinkadu Maidan), site of the Thrissur Pooram festival each April.
Munnar, in the Western Ghats at an elevation of 1,600 metres, is the great hill station of central Kerala. The town and its surrounding tea estates were developed from the 1880s onwards by Scottish planters as the Kannan Devan Hills Plantations; the manicured rolling hillsides of clipped tea bushes — interspersed with stands of eucalyptus, silver oak, and the occasional surviving patch of original sholas (high-altitude rainforest) — extend for tens of kilometres in every direction. The Eravikulam National Park immediately north of Munnar is the largest remaining habitat of the Nilgiri tahr, an endemic mountain goat now numbering only a few thousand individuals worldwide. The Anamudi peak, at 2,695 metres, is the highest point in South India and the highest in mainland India south of the Himalayas.
North Kerala — Kozhikode, Wayanad, Kannur, Bekal
The north of the state — comprising the districts of Malappuram, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Kannur, and Kasaragod — sees a fraction of the tourist numbers of the south and centre and is, for that reason alone, worth the additional travel time for visitors with more than ten days. The cultural texture changes noticeably: Mappila Muslim communities are more visible, the cuisine shifts toward Thalassery biryani and the wood-fired baked sweets of the spice trade, the language carries more Arabic and Persian loan words, and the Theyyam ritual tradition replaces (or complements) the temple festival circuit of the south.
Kozhikode (Calicut) is the principal city of the north and the historical seat of the Zamorins, the Hindu rulers under whose flag Vasco da Gama landed in 1498. The contemporary city is unselfconsciously commercial and largely undisturbed by tourism; its draws are the historic Kuttichira mosque district, the SM Street commercial bazaar (one of the most atmospheric in India), the Mananchira Square at the city's centre, and the unrivalled Mappila cuisine of the kalari biryani houses. The Kappad beach, fifteen kilometres north, marks the actual landing site of Vasco da Gama and is a quiet, locally used coastline.
Inland from Kozhikode, the Wayanad district occupies a high plateau in the Western Ghats at 700–2,100 metres, with the climate, vegetation, and atmosphere of an entirely different country. The plateau supports coffee, cardamom, and pepper plantations interspersed with patches of original semi-evergreen forest. The Edakkal Caves, with petroglyphs dating from the late Stone Age, the tribal villages around Mananthavady and Sulthan Bathery, and the Banasura Sagar Dam reservoir together fill several days of unhurried exploration. The Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary, contiguous with the Bandipur and Mudumalai parks across the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu borders, forms one of the largest remaining elephant habitats in southern India.
Kannur on the coast is the heartland of the Theyyam tradition; the Parassinikadavu Sri Muthappan Temple, ten kilometres from the town, performs the Muthappan Theyyam twice a day year-round and is the easiest place for a visiting traveller to encounter the tradition in something approaching its authentic ritual context. The seventeenth-century St Angelo Fort, the Loknath Weavers' Cooperative (where the heavy Kannur cotton handloom is still produced), and the small fishing harbours along the coast each repay an afternoon of attention.
At the northernmost end of the state, Bekal — a vast laterite fort built in the seventeenth century and overlooking a long crescent of empty beach — is one of the most photogenic single sites in Kerala and the setting for the famous "Tu Hi Re" sequence in Mani Ratnam's film Bombay (1995). The neighbouring beach at Muzhappilangad, just south, is the only drive-on beach in India: a five-kilometre strip of hard-packed sand on which it is possible (and locally normal) to drive a car right along the surf line.
Choosing an Itinerary
Five days. Concentrate on one region. The Kochi–Alappuzha–Munnar triangle in central Kerala is the most efficient introduction; the Thiruvananthapuram–Varkala–Kollam–Alappuzha sequence is a south-coast alternative.
Ten days. Combine south and central, or central and north. South-and-central works as Thiruvananthapuram → Varkala → Alappuzha (houseboat) → Kochi → Munnar → Kochi. Central-and-north works as Kochi → Munnar → Wayanad → Kannur → Bekal.
Two weeks or more. Cover all three regions, with two days of slack for unscheduled rest. The classical sequence is south → central → north, exiting via Mangalore in Karnataka rather than doubling back to Kochi.