Kerala & South India: Backwaters, Temples & Misty Hills

Kerala stretches along India's southwestern coast - a narrow strip of land between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, threaded by over 1,500 km of interconnected canals, rivers, and lagoons. This intricate waterway system, known as the backwaters, is best explored by kettuvallam - traditional rice barges, luxuriously converted into floating hotels. Alleppey (Alappuzha) is the backwater capital: hire a houseboat for a night and drift past coconut palms, paddy fields, and still-water villages where life proceeds much as it has for centuries. In the hills two hours east, Munnar's tea estates carpet the Western Ghats in vivid green - India's most beautiful hill station, with cooler air and misty valleys unlike anything in the north.

• Alleppey (Alappuzha) - overnight houseboat on the backwaters
• Munnar - tea estates, Eravikulam National Park (Nilgiri tahr)
• Thekkady (Periyar) - wildlife boat ride and spice plantation tour
• Kovalam & Varkala - Kerala's finest beaches, cliff-top cafés
• Kochi (Fort Cochin) - Portuguese heritage, Chinese fishing nets, Kerala cuisine

Tamil Nadu is the spiritual heartland of Dravidian civilisation - a state where towering temple gopurams dominate every city skyline. Madurai's Meenakshi Amman Temple, with its twelve towers decorated in thousands of painted deities, is one of the most extraordinary structures in the world - still an active, living place of worship visited by thousands of pilgrims daily. Mahabalipuram's 7th-century rock-cutshore temples, carved directly from granite boulders at the sea's edge, are UNESCO-listed masterpieces. Ooty and Kodaikanal provide cool Nilgiri hill escapes. Chettinad, in the heart of the state, offers the finest regional cuisine in South India - pepper-heat curries and elaborate rice meals in magnificent heritage mansions.

• Madurai - Meenakshi Amman Temple, night aarti ceremony
• Mahabalipuram - 7th-century shore templates, UNESCO World Heritage Site
• Thanjavur - Brihadeeswarar Temple, 11th-century Chola masterpiece
• Ooty / Kodaikanal - Nilgiri Hills, toy train, tea gardens
• Chettinad - heritage mansions, finest regional South Indian cuisine

Hampi, three hours north of Bangalore, is one of the most extraordinary archaeological sites in the world - the ruined capital of the Vijayanagara Empire, which at its 15th-century peak was one of the largest cities on earth. Today, its 26 square kilometres of royal enclosures, bazaars, elephant stables, and the extraordinary Vittala Temple - with its famous musical stone chariot - are scattered across a surreal landscape of enormous granite boulders. The effect is unlike any other heritage site in India: otherworldly, luminous at sunset, and entirely unforgettable. Mysore's Amba Vilas Palace, lit by ten thousand bulbs on Sunday evenings, is South India's most magnificent surviving royal palace.

• Hampi - UNESCO World Heritage, 26 sq km of Vijayanagara ruins
• Vittala Temple - musical stone chariot, ornate 56-pillared hall
• Mysore Palace - sun-drenched Sunday evening illumination
• Coorg (Kodagu) - coffee estates, waterfalls, Tibetan monastery
• Badami & Pattadakal - 6th-century cave temples