A few years ago I visited Kerala, and found it absolutely enchanting.
We went in March, when it wasn’t too hot and our first stop was Kochi, which used to be known as Cochin.
The visit to the beautiful 17th-century Jewish Synagogue was memorable. It had wonderful old blue and white tiles on the floor and had amazing chandeliers and grand lightings. The city’s spice market is also well worth seeing - it has all these baskets of wonderful-smelling spices which are grown in the region. Another highlight was taking a sunset cruise and watching the sun go down over Kochi’s famous ‘Chinese fishing nets’.
The stay at Malabar House Hotel, a boutique hotel in a 19th-century colonial house with distinct echoes of the Raj, took me to the golden era.
It was indeed a crammed week, which included a trip to see the elephants in Eravikulam National Park. We also enjoyed a two-day cruise on a rice boat, which had been converted into a tiny floating hotel - it was fascinating to see how life was lived along the riverbanks.
Our last stop was to the tea gardens up in the hills, which you can tour and don’t seem to have changed much over the years. There were people with baskets on their backs picking the tea. The only real difference is that nowadays they work to the sound of Bollywood music drifting over the hills.