Kerala — Munnar, Thekkady, Alleppey & Kovalam

Cantilevered shore nets on the harbour front, worked by teams of four or five men who drop and haul them by walking a set of counterweights. They have been used here for centuries and still bring in a small catch that is sold on the spot.

• Watch a net being hauled
• Sunset over the harbour mouth
• Buy fish at the stalls and have it cooked next door

The oldest European church still standing in India, begun by the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century. Vasco da Gama was buried here before his remains were taken back to Lisbon, and the empty grave is still marked in the floor.

• See the marked grave slab
• Read the old Dutch tombstones along the walls
• Walk across to the parade ground

A low Portuguese-built palace handed to the Raja of Kochi and later reworked by the Dutch, which is why it is usually called the Dutch Palace. The upstairs rooms hold some of the best-preserved temple murals in Kerala, painted floor to ceiling.

• See the Ramayana murals
• Look at the royal palanquins and coronation robes
• Walk on to Jew Town and the spice warehouses

Two roadside falls on the Kochi–Munnar highway that step down the rock in several stages. They are at their fullest between June and December and are a natural place to break the climb.

• Stop at the viewing platform
• Tea at the roadside stalls
• Photograph the valley below

A high grassland park on the slopes below Anamudi, the tallest peak in south India. It holds the largest surviving population of the Nilgiri tahr, a stocky wild goat that grazes close enough to the visitor path to be seen without binoculars. Access is by forest department shuttle from Rajamalai.

• Take the shuttle up to Rajamalai
• Walk the marked trail for tahr sightings
• Look for the Neelakurinji slopes

A concrete gravity dam built in the 1940s to store water for the hydel scheme, now a quiet lake with tea slopes on one side and shola forest on the other. Speedboats and pedal boats run from the bank.

• Boat ride on the reservoir
• Visit the Indo-Swiss dairy farm nearby
• Stop at Echo Point on the way

A working demonstration of how leaf becomes tea, run on the Nallathanni estate. The old rollers, a rail engine wheel and photographs from the plantation years are set out alongside a short processing line, and the visit ends with a tasting.

• Watch the rolling and drying line
• Sit through the tasting
• Buy estate tea to take home

The highest point on the Munnar road, on the Kerala–Tamil Nadu boundary, looking down over the Theni plains. It was once the transfer point where tea was ropewayed down to the valley below.

• View across the state border
• Walk the short trail from the car park
• Kurinji slopes in flowering years

A boat cruise on the lake formed by the Mullaperiyar dam, inside a reserve of nearly 900 square kilometres. Elephant, gaur, sambar and wild boar come to the shoreline, and the drowned tree stumps standing in the water are the remains of the forest flooded when the dam was built. Tiger sightings are rare.

• Take the government boat from the jetty
• Watch the shoreline for elephant herds
• Carry binoculars for the bird life

A guided walk through a working smallholding around Kumily, where cardamom, pepper vines, nutmeg, clove and vanilla grow together on the same slope. The guides show how each is harvested and cured.

• Learn to identify the crops on the vine
• See cardamom drying
• Buy spices direct from the estate

A demonstration of the Kerala martial art, one of the oldest fighting systems still taught. The programme moves from body conditioning and kicks to sword, shield and flexible-blade sequences in a sunken earth-floor arena.

• Watch the weapon sequences
• Sit in the front rows for the floor work
• Ask the trainers about the training system

The cruise runs from the Alleppey jetty out into the Vembanad system and along the smaller canals of Kuttanad, where the paddy fields sit below the level of the water and are kept dry by bunds. You pass village landings, duck flocks, coir workshops and toddy shops from a few metres away.

• Sit on the upper deck through the afternoon
• Watch the canal-side villages at close range
• Fresh karimeen cooked on board

One of the very few places in the world where farming is done below sea level, worked this way since the nineteenth century. The bunds and small pumping stations that keep the fields drained are visible from the water all afternoon.

• Stop at a village landing
• See the bund pumps at work
• Buy fish or prawns from a canal-side seller

The principal temple of the old Travancore royal house, built in Dravidian style around a reclining image of Vishnu. The seven-storey gopuram and the temple tank in front of it are the usual view; entry to the shrine itself is restricted to Hindus, with a strict dress code and no phones or cameras.

• View the gopuram from the tank
• Walk the fort streets around the temple
• Change into a mundu or sari if you plan to enter

The southernmost and busiest of the Kovalam crescents, named for the red and white striped lighthouse on the rock above it. The tower is open to visitors most afternoons and the climb gives a clear view down the coast.

• Climb the lighthouse for the coastal view
• Swim between the flagged safe zone
• Dinner at a beachfront restaurant