Private, on your own dates · India
An 8-day Kerala journey from the colonial harbour at Kochi up into the Munnar tea hills, on to the Periyar spice country and down to a night on the Alleppey backwaters.
The soul of Kerala is not in any one place but in how quickly the state changes character — from a harbour town with five hundred years of foreign trade in its architecture, up into tea country at 1,600 metres, across to a spice reserve where elephants come down to the water, and finally to a network of canals where the road runs out and a boat becomes the only sensible way to travel. This eight-day route takes those four in the order the geography suggests.
It begins in Kochi, where Portuguese, Dutch and British rule left a compact old quarter you can walk in an afternoon: Chinese fishing nets still worked by hand at the harbour mouth, the church where Vasco da Gama was first buried, a Dutch palace of Kerala murals, and a synagogue on a lane of spice warehouses that still smells of ginger and cardamom. An evening Kathakali performance, with the hour of make-up beforehand shown to the audience, gives the classical half of the picture.
The road then climbs. Munnar's tea gardens cover the hillsides in clipped green terraces that were planted by Scottish planters in the 1880s and are still picked by hand, and the high grassland above them at Eravikulam holds the largest surviving population of the Nilgiri tahr. From there the route crosses to Thekkady on the edge of the Periyar Tiger Reserve, where a boat on the lake is the standard way of watching wildlife, and where the surrounding hills are planted with cardamom, pepper, nutmeg and clove that you can walk through with a grower.
The last stretch drops to sea level at Alleppey, where you board a private houseboat — a converted rice barge with bedrooms, a deck and a cook — and spend a night moving through the backwaters, past villages that face the water rather than any road, before disembarking for the transfer back to Kochi. Travel between the four bases is by private air-conditioned vehicle with the same driver throughout, and local guides join for the sightseeing in Kochi, Munnar and Thekkady. It suits travellers who would rather see one state properly than cross three.
Hotels are named on your confirmation — all are of the stated category.
The representative waits outside the arrivals hall with a name board for the transfer to the hotel.
India
Oct–Mar is the golden season across most of India. Monsoon (Jun–Sep) transforms Kerala and the Northeast.
The houseboat is booked for your party alone, with its own crew of three including a cook. Only the size of the boat changes with the number of travellers, from a one-bedroom barge upwards.
No. State rules require houseboats to moor before sunset and stay moored until the following morning, so the cruising happens in the afternoon and again briefly after breakfast on the last day.
Elephant, gaur, sambar, wild boar and a long list of birds are all regularly seen along the shoreline, especially in the dry months from February to May. Tigers are present in the reserve but very rarely seen from the boat.
October to March is the most comfortable, with lower humidity and clear hill weather. June to September is monsoon season, which is beautiful in the hills and popular for Ayurvedic treatment, but boat rides and views are less reliable.
Munnar sits at around 1,600 metres, so evenings are cool all year and can drop close to 10°C between December and February. A fleece or light jacket is needed even when the coast is hot and humid.
No. Entry at Eravikulam National Park, the Periyar reserve, the palace, the synagogue and the tea museum is excluded and settled locally. The Periyar boat ride and the spice plantation walk are included.
Three of the eight days are travelling days, each around four hours on hill or coastal roads. The remaining days are based in one place with short local journeys only, so the driving is spread rather than concentrated.
Yes. Most hotels on this route have their own Ayurvedic centre and treatments can be booked directly with the property. They are not part of the package and are settled at the hotel.
Tell Tulli what you'd change — hotels, dates, an extra city — and she'll price it with our team and come back to you.