There’s no better place to get a feel for Kerala’s unique cultural blend than in the breezy seafront city of Kochi. Kochi has a history stretching back centuries, combining colonial European and Indian influences in a chocolate-box old town sprinkled with palm trees. Take a tuk-tuk tour past street art murals and Dutch shophouses, then spend your free time wandering from boutique to café between churches, synagogues and mosques. Kochi is one of India’s most progressive cities, but it’s also a living repository of classical culture – as you’ll discover when you visit the home of a Bharatnatyam dancer for a private lesson, then attend a Kathakali performance in the evening.

Heading inland from the coast will bring you to Muvattupuzha, a lively rural town at the confluence of three rivers. Welcome to the Keralan countryside: a lush pocket characterized by paddy fields and languid, palm-fringed rivers. Spend your days here taking lazy canoe trips on the water, wandering through fields of rubber and tapioca, or lounging by one of the best pools in Kerala. Your hosts at the Indian Summer House are your key to the local culture, and there are endless opportunities to go for boat rides, get ayurvedic spa treatments, and visit temples, churches, bird sanctuaries and waterfalls. Or, just enjoy your surroundings and do not very much at all.

After an early-morning boat trip to a local temple for a blessing, it’s a two-hour drive to Vagamon: one of Kerala’s most underrated hill stations. Watch as the landscape gradually transforms, taking you from flat farmlands to the foothills of the Western Ghats, with misty meadows, rolling green tea fields, and cool montane forests. As beautiful as any hill station in India, yet barely visited by international tourists, it’s a wonderful place to rest up in a whitewashed plantation bungalow, drinking tea and eating food grown in the surrounding fields. Guided nature walks and excursions take you out into the hills, to tea factories, peaceful ashrams, and tumbling mountain streams.

Heading down from the hills and back towards the steamy coast, your next stop is a quintessential Keralan landscape: the backwaters. You’ll be staying at a farm on a river island, with an endless network of waterways spidering outwards, ready to be explored by boat or canoe. This is a real tropical paradise, with sunsets over groves of palm trees, paddy fields, rice barge houseboats and churches. There are many things to do and see – like boat rides, cooking classes or birdwatching tours – but be sure to take the time to just sit out in front of your cottage and watch the watery world go by.

After a day’s cruising the backwaters on a rice barge houseboat (kettuvallam), wrap up your Keralan adventure with two days at the beach. Mararikulam is one of the best beach destinations in Kerala: think golden sands, blue skies and swaying palms. Yet it remains wonderfully sleepy, low-key and undeveloped. You might choose to relax by the pool for the remainder of your trip, and we wouldn’t blame you. If you do want to explore, head out on a cycling tour and you’ll get to have a traditional breakfast with a local family, see fishermen auctioning their catch, and join in with a cooking class for lunch.