South India

South India covers the five southern states and the country you cross to reach them, from Karnataka’s western hills down to the tip of the mainland at Kanyakumari. Our collection concentrates on Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala, the arc where coffee estates, granite temple complexes, colonial quarters and lagoon-fed backwaters sit within reach of one another.

What sets the south apart is layering. Vijayanagara left a ruined capital at Hampi. The Cholas, Pandyas and their successors built the towering gopurams that still order daily worship at Madurai and Rameswaram. The British and the French left coffee plantations, hill-station railways and a seafront town of mustard walls. Kerala added its own grammar of water, spice gardens and tea. Food shifts with each of these, from Coorg pandi curry to Chettinad kitchens to a Malayali fish meal on a banana leaf.

The range runs from active temple pilgrimage to quiet estate mornings and long, unhurried days on a boat. It suits travellers who want depth over box-ticking, who don’t mind a few hours in the car between regions, and who are happy to observe the etiquette that living temples ask of visitors.

What you’ll find

• Living temple towns
• Working Dravidian temples with their gopurams, tanks and daily ritual, entered on their own terms of dress and conduct
• Coffee and spice estates in Coorg, Chikmagalur and the Western Ghats, with plantation stays and slow mornings
• Vijayanagara-era ruins across the boulder landscape of Hampi and the rock-cut sites near Badami
• Nilgiri hill stations reached by winding road or the old mountain railway, cool even in high summer
• The French quarter of Puducherry, its grid of coloured houses, cafes and seafront promenade
• Kerala’s backwaters, tea country and Arabian Sea coast, from houseboat nights to Munnar’s plantations
• Regional kitchens that change every few hundred kilometres, from Coorg to Chettinad to the Malabar coast

When to go. The reliable window is October to March, when days are warm rather than hot and the air is clearest across most of the south. The peninsula has two monsoons: the south-west from roughly June to September, and the north-east from October to December, which brings rain to Tamil Nadu and the Coromandel coast just as the rest of the country dries out. The hill stations of Coorg, Chikmagalur and the Nilgiris stay cool year-round and are pleasant even in the hot months before the rains. April and May are hot on the plains and better spent in the hills.