जगहें
The Kuttanad poldersप्रकृतिAlappuzha
Champakulam, Kainakary, Nedumudi, Ramankary and the lettered kayal blocks — paddy fields lying one to three metres below the water on the other side of the bund you are standing on, with pump houses running through the crop season. It is one of a very small number of places on earth where field crops are grown below sea level, and the FAO recognised the system as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System in 2013.
सबसे अच्छा समय: December to March, when the crop is standing and the fields are dry. कैसे पहुँचें: Country boat or road from Alappuzha; the Alappuzha–Changanassery road runs through it.
Thanneermukkom barrierविरासतAlappuzha
A shuttered regulator thrown across Vembanad Lake and commissioned in 1976 to keep tidal salt water out of the Kuttanad crop. The shutters are opened to pass the monsoon flood and closed for roughly half the year. It made the second crop possible and cost the lake its annual salt flush, which is why water hyacinth now covers much of the southern basin and the clam and prawn breeding cycles have thinned.
कैसे पहुँचें: On the Cherthala–Vaikom road, about 35 km from Alappuzha.
Vembanad Lake and Kumarakomवन्यजीवKottayam, Alappuzha
India's longest lake and the core of the Vembanad–Kol Ramsar site listed in 2002. The Kumarakom bird sanctuary on its eastern shore takes migrants from November, and the annual bird count here is one of the longest-running citizen surveys in the country.
सबसे अच्छा समय: November–February.
Alappuzha town and the coir beltशहरीAlappuzha
A port laid out with a grid of canals in the late eighteenth century under the Travancore diwan Raja Kesavadas, because cargo moved by water long before it moved by road. Mechanised coir factories followed from 1859, and the warehouses, the canal bridges and the labour history all date from that industry rather than from tourism.
AranmulaविरासतPathanamthitta
A Pamba-bank village holding three separate things at once — the Parthasarathy temple and its palliyodam boats, the vallasadya feast sung for by the boatmen, and the households that cast the metal mirror. It is the densest concentration of living craft and ritual on the river.
सबसे अच्छा समय: Onam, for the Uthrattadhi boat procession.
Sabarimalaतीर्थPathanamthitta
A forest shrine to Ayyappa at about 1,260 m inside the Periyar reserve, reached on foot from Pamba or on the longer traditional route from Erumeli. Pilgrims observe a 41-day vratham, wear black or blue, carry the irumudikettu and climb the eighteen steps. The shrine opens for Mandala pooja for 41 days from mid-November and for Makaravilakku on 14 January, and for the first five days of each Malayalam month.
सबसे अच्छा समय: The Mandala and Makaravilakku season, mid-November to mid-January. कैसे पहुँचें: Road to Pamba via Chengannur or Kottayam, then about 5 km on foot.
Sree Padmanabhaswamy Templeतीर्थThiruvananthapuram
The temple to which Travancore itself was made over in 1750, and the institution the state then understood itself to be administering on behalf of. The deity reclines in a single view split across three doors; the ottakkal mandapam in front is cut from one block of granite. An inventory of its vaults ordered by the courts in 2011 found treasure of a scale that made international news, and one vault has not been opened.
Kuthiramalika PalaceविरासतThiruvananthapuram
Swathi Thirunal's own palace beside the temple, named for the 122 carved horse brackets under its eaves. His compositions are performed in its grounds each January at the Swathi Sangeethotsavam, which is the rare case of a music festival held in the composer's house.
Napier Museum and Sree Chitra Art GalleryविरासतThiruvananthapuram
An 1880 Indo-Saracenic building by Robert Chisholm with a ventilation design that keeps the interior cool without machinery, and next to it the gallery holding the largest public collection of Raja Ravi Varma's work alongside Rajput, Mughal and Tanjore painting.
Varkala cliff and Sivagiriसमुद्र तटThiruvananthapuram
The only sea cliffs on the Kerala coast, a sedimentary formation recognised as a national geological monument, with freshwater springs breaking out of the cliff face onto Papanasam beach below. On the ridge behind sits Sivagiri, Sree Narayana Guru's mutt and the destination of the yellow-clad pilgrimage at the turn of the year.
सबसे अच्छा समय: October–March.
Kovalam and Poovarसमुद्र तटThiruvananthapuram
Three crescent coves under a headland lighthouse at Kovalam, and 25 km south at Poovar the point where the Neyyar reaches the sea behind a sandbar, so a river, a backwater and open surf sit within a few hundred metres of each other.
Ashtamudi Lake and Munroe Islandप्रकृतिKollam
An eight-armed estuarine lake, a Ramsar site since 2002, with Munroe Island in its middle — a cluster of islets between the lake and the Kallada river where canal-width channels run behind the houses. The lake's short-neck clam fishery was certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council in 2014, the first Indian fishery to be.
Thangassery, KollamविरासतKollam
A headland that passed from Portuguese to Dutch to British hands, leaving fort ruins, cemeteries and a tall red-and-white striped lighthouse. Kollam behind it is the town where most of India's cashew is shelled.
Krishnapuram PalaceविरासतAlappuzha
An eighteenth-century Travancore palace at Kayamkulam in the gabled, double-storey Kerala style, holding the Gajendra Moksham mural — the largest single mural panel in Kerala, over forty square metres of one continuous composition.
Mannarasalaतीर्थAlappuzha
A serpent grove at Haripad with tens of thousands of stone naga images set among the trees, and an establishment led by a priestess rather than a priest. Families come to the Ayilyam observance to resolve what are understood as ancestral serpent obligations.
Ponmudi and Agasthyakoodamपहाड़Thiruvananthapuram
A tea-and-shola hill station at about 1,100 m, and behind it the 1,868 m Agasthyakoodam peak inside the Agasthyamalai biosphere reserve, one of the most botanically rich blocks in the Western Ghats. Access to the peak is by permit and limited to a short season.
सबसे अच्छा समय: January–March for the peak trek.