The Big Crossing (South India)

Twelve nights crossing South India coast to coast on a Royal Enfield, from the Arabian Sea at Kochi to the Bay of Bengal, and it is the only true sea-to-sea route the operator sells.

Fort Kochi opens it and gets a full day, which it earns: the oldest Christian church in India, Portuguese houses five centuries old, a sixteenth-century synagogue, a palace built by the Portuguese and remodelled by the Dutch, and the cantilevered Chinese fishing nets along the shoreline.

Kumily follows through the backwaters and the spice farms of the Vagamon hills, then Munnar on mountain roads among the tea plantations below the highest peak in South India, with a tea factory or the museum optional and Eravikulam National Park alongside. Kodaikanal comes next over the Western Ghats into Tamil Nadu, another of the English hill towns in the Palani hills.

Madurai follows across the Coimbatore plains through coffee, pepper and cardamom, a major pilgrimage city built around the Meenakshi temple. Chettinad is next, where the Chettiar merchant community built enormous mansions, several of them now heritage hotels, then Thanjavur by way of Thirumayam fort and cotton fields, for the Brihadeshwara temple, a thousand years old and built of granite in a district with no granite anywhere nearby. The run to Pondicherry takes in the UNESCO listed temple at Darasuram and reaches the Bay of Bengal, with lunch at Auroville on the way. Bike rental is included and the price is quoted per person. The two coasts could hardly be less alike, which is the whole point of crossing between them.