Private, on your own dates · India
A 13-day overland route across South India from Chennai through Pondicherry, Thanjavur and Madurai into Kerala, ending on a houseboat and in Fort Kochi.
South India is a different country from the one most first-time itineraries show. There are no Mughal domes here and very little of the Rajput palace tradition; instead there are granite temple towns that have been in continuous worship for a thousand years, a French colonial grid that still uses its own street names, bronze casting workshops that never stopped, and a coastline of backwaters where the road gives out. This thirteen-day route crosses Tamil Nadu from the coast to the temple heartland and then over the Western Ghats into Kerala.
It opens in Chennai and moves quickly to the shore temples of Mahabalipuram, where seventh-century Pallava sculptors cut whole shrines out of standing rock and left the largest bas-relief in the world unfinished on a granite face. Pondicherry follows, and it is a genuine oddity — a former French territory whose seafront quarter keeps its bougainvillea walls, its yellow-washed colonial houses and a street plan that separates the French town from the Tamil town by a canal that no longer runs.
The middle of the journey belongs to the Chola country. Thanjavur's Brihadeeswarar Temple, finished in 1010, carries an eighty-tonne granite capstone on a tower thirteen storeys high, and the smaller temples at Darasuram and Gangaikonda Cholapuram are less visited and in some ways finer. At Trichy the temple island of Srirangam is the largest working temple complex anywhere, with seven concentric walls and a town living between them. Madurai closes the Tamil half at the Meenakshi Amman Temple, where twelve gopurams covered in painted figures rise above a city that has grown in rings around it, and where the night ceremony carrying the god to the goddess's chamber has been performed daily for centuries.
Crossing the Ghats into Kerala changes the register entirely. Thekkady sits at the edge of the Periyar reserve in spice country, where cardamom and pepper grow under the forest canopy and wildlife is watched from a boat. Alleppey brings a night on a private houseboat in the backwaters, and Fort Kochi ends the journey with Chinese fishing nets, a Portuguese church, a Dutch palace of Kerala murals and an evening of Kathakali. Travel is by private air-conditioned vehicle with the same driver for the full route, with licensed local guides in each city.
Hotels are named on your confirmation — all are of the stated category.
You leave from a different place than you arrive — book an open-jaw flight, not a return.
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.
Almost all of the complex is open at every site on this route. The inner sanctums at Kapaleeshwarar, Srirangam and Meenakshi are restricted to Hindus, but the gopurams, pillared halls, tanks and market corridors — which is the great majority of what there is to see — are open to everyone.
Six of the thirteen days include a road stage, most between two and four hours, and the route covers roughly 1,300 kilometres in total. The longest single days are Madurai to Thekkady and Thekkady to Alleppey, both around four hours.
No. The route starts at Chennai and ends at Kochi, so you will need an open-jaw international booking or a domestic connection at one end. Both are well served by international carriers.
Shoulders and knees covered at every site, and shoes removed at the outer gate. Socks are worth carrying because granite courtyards get extremely hot from mid-morning, and long trousers or a long skirt are more comfortable than shorts in any case.
November to March is the most comfortable across both states, with lower humidity and reliable weather. April and May are very hot inland at Thanjavur and Madurai, and the monsoon runs from June to September on the Kerala side and again in October and November on the Tamil coast.
Yes. The boat is booked for your party alone with its own crew of three including a cook, and only the size of the barge changes with the number of travellers.
No. Entry at the temples, monuments, museums and the Periyar reserve is excluded and settled locally, as are the special darshan queue arrangements some temples offer. The Periyar boat ride and the spice walk are included.
Only partly. The temples involve long walks on uneven granite in bare feet, the Trichy Rockfort is 437 steps with no lift, and Mahabalipuram is open rock. Several elements can be dropped or substituted, and that is worth discussing before booking.
Tell Tulli what you'd change — hotels, dates, an extra city — and she'll price it with our team and come back to you.