Young, cool, ever-growing, seething with life – Tamil Nadu’s biggest city is a heck of a place to start. Beneath honking traffic, building sites and crowds, it’s a city humming with cultural life, both classical and contemporary. We’ve included an evening of Carnatic storytelling to cover the classical (Chennai is a repository of Tamil culture, one of the oldest continuous cultures in the world), while a morning walking tour on day two should take care of the contemporary: from chic art galleries to hipster coffee shops and Marina Beach. You won’t be here long, but a taste of Chennai makes an exuberant contrast to the ancient temple towns you’re about to discover.

After the intensity of Chennai, it’s a refreshing change of pace as you follow the coast to postcard-pretty Pondicherry. Stop along the way to explore seaside Mahabalipuram, famous for its monolithic rock-cut temples, before arriving at ‘Pondy’ – where the French ruled for three centuries, leaving behind pâtisseries, crayon-bright townhouses and Catholic churches. Over the course of just two days, you’ll go from skyscrapers to thousand-year-old World Heritage carvings, to sipping coffee in colonial courtyards, with a visit to India’s most famous ashram thrown in. It’s a wonderful snapshot of Tamil Nadu’s sheer variety and depth of history.

Heading inland from the Bay of Bengal will bring you to a totally different Tamil landscape: the farms and villages of Kumbakonam. This is one of the holiest pilgrimage destinations in India, with thousands of temples and monasteries scattered throughout the countryside. But the real joy of a visit here isn’t ancient architecture so much as the chance to immerse yourself in rural life. Bullocks pull wagons along dirt roads between betel plantations, locals gather at the mill to have their grain ground into flour, and brickmakers mould and bake bricks using age-old methods. It’s a wonderfully friendly, timeless atmosphere – and worlds away from anything you’ve experienced yet in Tamil Nadu.

Just when you thought you’d seen every side of Tamil Nadu, Chettinad steps in with something completely different. For about a century, this dry and dusty plain harboured one of the richest communities in the world. Today, it’s dotted with thousands of abandoned (or near-abandoned) mansions – some of them staggeringly ostentatious. These ghostly edifices are Chettinad’s primary draw, but a tour of the region will uncover more rural culture: Chola-style temples, handmade tile workshops, a women’s snack-making cooperative and a vibrant local market. Staying at a restored mansion, with an outdoor pool and bougainvillea-fringed garden, is the cherry on the cake.

Bursting with life – from its vast wholesale markets to its delicious street food to the enormous, buzzing temple at its heart – Madurai is yet another completely different face of Tamil Nadu. This is one of the oldest cities in India, its medieval marketplace atmosphere harking back to over two millennia of unbroken history. Though its temples top most must-see lists (with the 14 brilliantly coloured gopurams of Meenakshi deservedly at number one), the markets are our favourite part of Madurai. Sprawling across the city, buzzing all night, and overflowing with everything from jasmine flowers to dried chillies, they’re the reason this is called the ‘city that never sleeps’.

Today’s four-hour transfer will whisk you through one of India’s most dramatic transformations, from the parched, brown plains of Tamil Nadu to the electric green hillsides of the Keralan hill station of Munnar. Once the summertime retreat of British colonial elites, Munnar is a sylvan landscape of rolling hills and rustling tea fields, dotted with British-era bungalows and surrounded by the forests of the Western Ghats. Nothing could be further from what you’ve seen so far in Tamil Nadu, and it’s a blissfully cool and pleasant place to relax for a day and amble through the plantations, spotting exotic birds and stopping in for tea tasting at the local factory.

Totally different from Munnar, yet every bit as lush, the Keralan backwaters are among the most stereotypically beautiful destinations in India. Thousands of miles of canals, lagoons and rivers snake through landscapes of paddy fields, mangrove forests and waterside villages, while the laid-back local lifestyle contributes to the sense of having stumbled on a tropical paradise. It’s a long drive to get here, but it’s worth it: spend your days cruising on the water, birdwatching, getting ayurvedic massages, or any number of other cultural experiences arranged by your lodge on Vembanad Lake. Then, travel to Alleppey to board a converted rice barge for half a day’s cruise.

A tropical seaside town sprawling out from the colonial heart of Fort Cochin, Kochi is one of the prettiest, cleanest, and altogether most charming cities in India. Head out on a bike tour to get the lay of the land, learning about how Portuguese, Dutch and British occupation have shaped this cosmopolitan enclave on the Malabar Coast. But Kochi doesn’t live in the past – it’s one of the most progressive cities in India, packed with trendy boutiques, art cafés and fancy fusion restaurants, with close to zero poverty. In a word, it’s lovely, and there couldn’t be a more relaxing place to conclude your south India adventure.