Day 1 — Arrive in Cochin & Stay in Fort Kochi

We meet you inside the terminal at Cochin International Airport with a name board. Most long-haul flights from Europe and the Gulf land in the early hours, so your room is booked from the previous night and is ready when you arrive rather than at two in the afternoon.

Nothing else is scheduled. If you have never landed in India before, our guide to what happens when you land in Kerala walks through immigration, baggage, the SIM card counter and the meeting point.

If you wake up with energy, Fort Kochi is walkable and quiet. The Chinese fishing nets are five minutes away and best in the last hour of light.

Day 2 — Fort Kochi Sightseeing with a Licensed Guide

A morning walking tour with a licensed guide who works in the history rather than reciting dates. Fort Kochi is where three European empires and a Jewish community that arrived long before any of them are stacked on top of each other within a square mile.

St Francis Church, where Vasco da Gama was buried before his remains were moved to Lisbon. The Dutch cemetery. The Paradesi Synagogue in Mattancherry, built in 1568, with a floor of hand-painted Cantonese tiles no two of which are the same.

Then the spice warehouses on Bazaar Road where pepper and cardamom are still weighed by hand and the street smells accordingly.

In the late afternoon, a Kathakali performance. Arrive ninety minutes early for the make-up session — the transformation is the part most visitors find extraordinary, and the performance itself makes far more sense once you have watched it happen.

Day 3 — Cochin to Munnar

We leave after breakfast, around half past eight. The first two hours are flat; the last ninety minutes climb steadily through rubber plantations and then into tea.

We stop at Cheeyappara waterfalls, which fall in a series of steps beside the road.

Nothing is scheduled on arrival — Munnar’s viewpoints will be there tomorrow. The tea estates here were laid out by Scottish planters from the 1870s, and the bungalows, the clubs and the estate layout are still recognisably that.

Day 4 — Munnar Tea Country & Eravikulam National Park

An early start for Eravikulam National Park, where the Nilgiri tahr come close enough to the path that no telephoto lens is needed. Go at opening; the queue builds by nine.

Then a working tea factory tour with someone who runs one. Withering, rolling, oxidation, firing, grading — it takes an hour, ends in a tasting, and is the point at which a day of looking at green hillsides suddenly makes sense.

The afternoon is loose. Mattupetty Dam, Echo Point and the Kundala valley are all within half an hour. We would suggest picking two and sitting somewhere with the view rather than driving between six.

Day 5 — Munnar to Thekkady & Spice Plantation Experience

The easiest of the transfers — three hours through cardamom country, arriving in time for lunch.

The afternoon is a guided spice plantation walk, and it is the most historically interesting hour of the trip. Cardamom, black pepper on the vine, cinnamon bark, nutmeg, clove, vanilla and ginger, almost all within a few square metres.

This is what the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British came for, what the Romans traded for before any of them, and what made this coast one of the most fought-over stretches of shoreline in the world.

In the evening, a Kalaripayattu demonstration if you want it — one of the oldest surviving martial arts anywhere, and considerably more athletic than most visitors expect.

Day 6 — Periyar Wildlife, Thekkady & Ayurveda

Take the first boat on Periyar Lake, around seven in the morning. It is the slot where animals are genuinely at the water; later boats show you a beautiful lake and not much else.

That early start is possible only because you slept here rather than driving in this morning, which is the entire reason this itinerary gives Thekkady two nights.

Life jackets are issued and compulsory. An honest expectation: Periyar is a tiger reserve and tiger sightings from the boat are very rare.

What you reliably see is elephant at the shoreline, sambar deer, gaur, wild boar, otters and a great deal of birdlife.

In the afternoon, an Ayurvedic consultation and treatment at a Green Leaf classified centre.

Day 7 — Thekkady to Alleppey Private Houseboat

We leave at eight. Houseboats board between roughly noon and half past twelve, and missing that window costs you the afternoon cruise, so this is the one morning where the departure time is not negotiable.

Lunch is served on board as you push out into the Punnamada backwaters.

The boat is yours alone — a crew of two or three, a cook, and nobody else’s family. You cruise through the afternoon past paddy fields that sit below sea level, and at sunset the boat moors and stays moored until morning.

Day 8 — Alleppey to Kovalam Beach

Breakfast on the water, disembark around nine, then four hours south down the coast past Kollam and Varkala.

Kovalam is three crescent beaches below a working lighthouse, and unlike most of the Kerala coast it is patrolled — Lighthouse Beach has lifeguards and flagged swimming areas.

After eight days of moving, the afternoon is free and most people do not leave the hotel.

Day 9 — Relaxed Day in Kovalam

A day with nothing in it, deliberately.

If you want to fill it, Varkala’s clifftop is forty-five minutes north and the best sunset on this coast.

The Napier Museum and the zoo in Trivandrum are half an hour away and the museum building itself — Indo-Saracenic, 1880s, naturally air-conditioned by design — is worth the trip.

Surf lessons run at Kovalam for beginners.

Note that the Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum admits Hindus only. See the temple-access FAQ below.

Day 10 — Kovalam to Trivandrum International Airport

Forty minutes to Trivandrum International Airport. Allow three and a half hours before an international departure.

This is why the flight is booked as an open-jaw — into Kochi and out of Trivandrum. Kerala’s highlights run north to south and this route never retraces, so returning to Kochi would mean several additional hours of driving back up the coast on your final morning.