Your driver meets you inside the terminal at Cochin International Airport and it is about forty minutes to Fort Kochi. Brunton Boatyard stands on the site of the old shipyard where vessels were built for the Dutch and the British, and the sea-facing rooms look straight down the harbour mouth at the container ships coming in. Nothing is scheduled today. If you land early and want to walk, the Chinese fishing nets are a five-minute stroll and best in the last hour of light. Overnight in Fort Kochi.

A morning walking tour with a licensed guide who works in the history rather than reciting it — the Portuguese cemetery, St Francis Church where Vasco da Gama was first buried, the Paradesi Synagogue and the spice warehouses on Bazaar Road where the pepper is still weighed by hand. In the late afternoon, a Kathakali performance at the Kerala Kathakali Centre, arriving ninety minutes early to watch the performers apply their own make-up. The transformation is the part most guests remember. Overnight in Fort Kochi.

We leave after breakfast, around half past eight. It is four to four and a half hours east and upward, past the Cheeyappara and Valara waterfalls where the road doubles back on itself and the air starts to cool. Windermere Estate sits on a working cardamom and coffee plantation above the town, well away from Munnar’s traffic, and the temperature at 1,600 metres is around ten degrees below the coast. The afternoon is deliberately free — there is no sightseeing after this climb. Overnight in Munnar.

An early start for Eravikulam National Park, where the Nilgiri tahr come close enough to the path that no lens is needed. Then a walk through a working tea estate with someone who manages one — how the two leaves and a bud are picked, why the altitude matters, and what separates an estate tea from what reaches a supermarket. Afternoon at your own pace, with Mattupetty Dam and Echo Point available if you want them. One thing worth knowing: Eravikulam closes for roughly February and March each year for the tahr calving season, and if you travel then we substitute Top Station and a longer estate walk. Overnight in Munnar.

Three hours south-east through cardamom country, the tea giving way to spice as the road narrows. Spice Village is built as a village of individual cottages with elephant-grass thatch, and it sits at the edge of the Periyar Tiger Reserve — the CGH Earth property that has been doing genuine sustainability since long before anyone marketed it. The afternoon is for a guided plantation walk: cardamom, pepper on the vine, vanilla, nutmeg and clove, most of it within a few square metres. Overnight in Thekkady.

The first boat of the day on Periyar Lake leaves around seven, and it is the slot where elephants, gaur and sambar actually come down to drink. Later boats show you a beautiful lake and very little else — which is precisely why this itinerary puts you in Thekkady overnight rather than driving through. Life jackets are issued and compulsory.

In the afternoon, a consultation and treatment at a Green Leaf classified Ayurvedic centre. That classification is awarded by the Kerala Department of Tourism and it is worth checking anywhere you go: Green Leaf requires qualified doctors, trained therapists and proper facilities, while a great many hotel “Ayurvedic spas” hold no classification at all. Overnight in Thekkady.

We leave at eight. Houseboats board between noon and half past twelve and the drive west is four to four and a half hours, so this is the one morning where the departure time is fixed. You board a private one-bedroom premium houseboat — your own crew, your own chef, and air conditioning that runs through the afternoon cruise rather than only after nine at night.

That last detail is the single biggest difference between a premium boat and a standard one, and almost nobody explains it. Most Kerala houseboats run their air conditioning off a generator from around 9pm to 6am, which means a comfortable night and a warm afternoon. A small number run it all day. Those are the boats we book on this itinerary. You cruise Vembanad Lake and the narrower village canals, and the boat moors near a village around half past five. Dinner is cooked on board. Overnight on the houseboat.

Breakfast on the water, then disembark around nine. It is barely forty minutes north to Mararikulam. Marari Beach Resort is a CGH Earth property built in the style of a Keralan fishing village, with thatched garden villas, a large pool and a beach that shelves gently and is long enough that it never feels busy. Nothing is scheduled from here on. The fishing boats land in the morning if you want to walk down, and the Ayurvedic centre is Green Leaf classified if you want a second treatment. Overnight in Marari.

A slow morning. Cochin airport is roughly two hours away on flat road, which is why this route ends here rather than on the far south coast — a Kovalam finish would cost you five hours of driving on your final day. We recommend leaving three and a half hours before an international departure. If your flight is after midnight, as many long-haul departures from Kochi are, we will arrange a day-use villa rather than have you sit in the terminal.