The Spices Route (South India)

Eleven nights in a hill station loop from Kochi on a Royal Enfield, climbing out of the Kerala backwaters into tea country and over the Western Ghats into Tamil Nadu.

Fort Kochi opens it, then the backwaters themselves on the Malabar coast, a network of lagoons and canals running parallel to the sea. Kumily follows in the Western Ghats foothills, with spice gardens and Periyar National Park, where the cardamom and pepper grow on slopes that made this coast worth fighting over for two thousand years.

Munnar comes next among high altitude tea plantations below Anamudi, the highest peak in South India at around 2,700 metres, with a flexible loop day on the border of Eravikulam National Park. Kodaikanal follows in the Palani hills, an English hill town in cedar and eucalyptus forest, then Palakkad past the Palar dam and the pilgrimage town of Palani onto the Tamil Nadu plains.

Ooty is the set piece, reached through the Elivai Malai farmlands on a road with 35 hairpin bends inside twelve miles, below Doddabetta at 2,637 metres, the highest point in the Nilgiris. The descent runs through Mukurthi National Park to Thrissur, then Vypin Island by way of the pilgrimage town of Guruvayur and a coastal road, and back to Kochi through fishing villages, rice paddies and fruit plantations. Bike rental is included and the price is quoted per person. The hill stations exist because the British could not cope with the heat of the plains, and in April and May the logic of that becomes immediately apparent to anyone riding up to them.