Kerala travel guide

Travel to Kerala between Oct – Feb. Those are the months the weather, the crowds and the airfare line up — outside them you trade one of the three.

Currency

Indian Rupee (INR)

Language

Malayalam. English is spoken almost universally — Kerala has the highest literacy in India — and Hindi is understood in hotels and by drivers, but rarely on the street.

Time zone

IST (UTC+5:30)

Plug type

Type C / D / M

Flight time from India

2.5 hrs

Flying from

Ahmedabad · Mumbai · Delhi · Bengaluru · Hyderabad

• 

  A night on the Alleppey backwaters

  You board around noon at Punnamada, cross the wide Vembanad lake through the afternoon, and moor against a paddy bund for the night. The cook travels with the boat and will do an entirely vegetarian menu if you say so at booking. Insist on a boat that actually cruises — several operators simply anchor and charge for the view.

• 

  Munnar, and the tea line at dawn

  The road from Kochi climbs through rubber, then spice, then tea, and the change is visible from the car. Walk a picking line at Kolukkumalai — the highest tea estate in the world, reached only by jeep — or take the Tata tea museum at Nallathanni. Be at Top Station by seven, before the cloud fills the valley below.

• 

  Periyar at first light, Thekkady

  The 90-minute boat on the Periyar reservoir at the first slot of the day is the honest way to see elephant, gaur and sambar on the shoreline. Later boats see water. The bamboo raft and the border hike are far better, but both need booking in person at the Ecotourism counter a couple of days ahead.

• Fort Kochi on foot

  The Chinese fishing nets, St Francis Church where Vasco da Gama was first buried, the Paradesi Synagogue and the pepper godowns of Jew Town all fit into one morning walk. Book the Kathakali performance at the Kerala Kathakali Centre and arrive an hour early — the make-up being applied is better than the play.

• Varkala cliff or Marari sand

  Varkala is the prettier one — a red laterite cliff with cafés along the top and a temple beach below. Marari, forty minutes from Alleppey, is the flat, quiet, family one with fishing boats at either end. Neither carries the crowd or the touts of Kovalam.

• Ayurveda, done properly

  A genuine panchakarma needs fourteen days and a doctor; a seven-night rejuvenation programme is the realistic version of it. Use a centre with the Kerala Tourism Green Leaf or Olive Leaf classification, which is a real audited standard. Monsoon — June to August — is the traditional treatment season and the rates are at their lowest.

• SadyaJain friendly

  The banana-leaf feast — 24 to 28 items, rice, sambar, avial, olan, thoran and payasam — and every single one of them is vegetarian. Served at lunch, eaten with the right hand, and you fold the leaf towards yourself when you are finished. For a Jain traveller, note that avial and olan are built on yam, elephant-foot yam and other roots; ask and most kitchens will substitute.

• Appam with vegetable stewJain friendly

  A lace-edged fermented rice-and-coconut pancake with a pale, mild coconut-milk stew. Say "vegetable stew" clearly — the chicken version shares the menu line. Ask them to leave out the potato and go light on onion and it comes close to Jain-acceptable, which very little else on a Kerala menu does.

• Puttu with kadala curryVegetarian

  The standard Kerala breakfast: a steamed cylinder of rice flour layered with grated coconut, eaten with a black chickpea curry. Completely vegetarian, filling enough to skip lunch, and available at every roadside tea shop for under ₹80.

• Kerala parotta with veg kurmaVegetarian

  The flaky, layered, slapped-out flatbread that Kerala runs on. Order it at a thattukada — a roadside stall — but be specific: the default side at most of them is beef, and the vegetable kurma has to be asked for by name.

• Payasam, banana chips and Kozhikode halwaVegetarian

  Ada pradhaman is the jaggery-and-coconut-milk payasam, palada the milk one. Nendran banana chips fried in coconut oil are what you carry home; Kozhikode has an entire lane called Sweet Meat Street selling wheat halwa in a dozen flavours. All vegetarian, all travel well.

Set a meal preference — vegetarian, Jain or halal — when you book and we brief every hotel and restaurant on your itinerary.

• Cardamom, black pepper and clove — buy in Munnar or at a Jew Town godown, not at the airport
• Kasavu — the cream cotton saree or mundu with a gold border, from Balaramapuram
• Coir mats and rugs from Alleppey, the town the industry is named after
• Aranmula kannadi, the polished metal mirror made by four families in one village
• Nendran banana chips, Kozhikode halwa and cold-pressed coconut oil
• Ayurvedic oils from a licensed pharmacy — Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala is the benchmark

Distances read short and drive long — Kochi to Munnar is 130 km and four hours of hairpins. Almost every visitor books a car with a driver for the whole trip, ₹3,000–4,500 a day for a sedan including fuel, and it is the right call. Kochi has a clean metro from the airport side into town, the state ferries at Fort Kochi cost ₹10, and the Kochi–Trivandrum trains are frequent and comfortable if you would rather not sit in a car for six hours.

• Houseboats are not all licensed to the same standard. Ask for the Kerala Tourism classification, count the life jackets, and check the kitchen is on your boat rather than on a towed barge behind it.
• The Munnar, Wayanad and Idukki ghat roads slip in June–August; the 2018 and 2019 landslides closed them for weeks. If you travel in monsoon, build one buffer day before your flight home.
• The sea at Kovalam and Varkala has a genuine rip current and a real annual death toll. Swim only between the lifeguard flags, and not at all during the monsoon.
• Alcohol is sold only through government outlets and licensed hotel bars, and the 1st of every month is a dry day across the state — worth knowing before you plan an anniversary dinner.
• Leeches are everywhere in Thekkady and Wayanad after rain. Leech socks cost about ₹50 at the forest counter and are worth every rupee; salt or tobacco gets them off, pulling does not.

Per person, per day, on the ground — meals, local transport and entry tickets. Flights and hotels sit in the package price, not here.