South India Motorbike Expedition

Eleven nights from Chennai through Tamil Nadu into Kerala, guided, 1,200 kilometres on a Royal Enfield.

The south is a different India from the north and this route makes the case: Dravidian temple architecture, French colonial streets, tea hills and backwaters, in a part of the country where the riding is warm rather than high.

Mahabalipuram opens it, with seventh-century shore temples carved from granite outcrops. Thanjavur follows with the Brihadeeswarar temple, a thousand years old and still the tallest of its kind, then Madurai and the Meenakshi temple, whose towers are covered in several thousand painted figures. Pondicherry comes next, where the French quarter has kept its grid, its colours and its street names. Fort Kochi follows in Kerala, with Portuguese and Dutch remains side by side, then Munnar and Kodaikanal in the hill stations among the tea and spice, Thekkady with its spice gardens and performances of Kathakali and Kalaripayattu, and Alleppey for a houseboat night on the backwaters.

The bike hire is included; the full inclusions were not itemised on the operator’s page and are worth confirming at booking. October to March is the season, since the monsoon reaches Kerala in June and the state gets a great deal of it. Twelve days at a gentle pace covers two states and four distinct landscapes, and the houseboat at the end is the right way to finish. The riding is easy by the standards of the operator’s Himalayan tours, with the traffic rather than the terrain being the thing to get used to.