Kerala & Maldives: Luxury India & Island Escape

You land in Cochin and are met by your driver, who takes you to Fort Kochi, the historic peninsula where the city’s Portuguese, Dutch and British layers are still visible. Brunton Boatyard, set in a heritage waterfront property in the old quarter, is the base for two nights.

A guided half-day on day three covers the headlines: St Francis’ Church (originally Portuguese, dating to 1503 and the first European church built in India), the Mattancherry Palace, the spice markets and the cantilevered Chinese fishing nets along the waterfront, worked the same way since the fourteenth century. The evening is given over to a cooking class in a Keralan family home: a handful of regional dishes (fish moilee, appam, beef ularthiyathu), eaten with your hosts.

A three-hour drive inland on day four brings you to Indian Summer House at Muvattupuzha, a family-run colonial-style property on its own grounds with a pool, a working kitchen garden and the river nearby. The day-five offering is deliberately unstructured: market visits, a local temple, a Kalaripayattu martial arts demonstration if you want one, or simply the pool.

A three-hour drive climbs into the Western Ghats to Munnar, where the landscape becomes tea. The estates here were laid out from the 1880s onward by the British planter James Finlay, and the High Range Club, the old planters’ clubhouse, is still operational. Spice Tree Munnar is the right base for two nights: a working garden hotel at 1,600 meters with views over the Anamudi range, the highest peaks in peninsular India.

The day-seven offering is a guided walk through one of the working estates, with a tasting session at the end and a high tea served the way the planters drank it. The pace is unhurried.

On day eight you head back toward the coast for the trip’s pivot. A three-hour drive after lunch brings you to the Alleppey backwaters, where you board a private rice barge for a single night. The boat moves slowly along the canals through paddy fields, half a meter below sea level, and waterfront villages. A chef is on board, the dinner is fresh from the markets you passed that morning, and the afternoon and evening are entirely your own.

After breakfast on the houseboat, your driver takes you to Cochin Airport for the flight to Malé. The transfer at the other end is a twenty-five-minute speedboat across to Velassaru, a single-island resort that sits on its own twelve-hectare reef in the South Malé Atoll, an hour or so south of the airport.
Four nights here works as the right counter to the seven that came before. The reef itself is the centerpiece: snorkelling is straight off the house reef in clear water, with reef sharks, turtles and the occasional eagle ray as standard sightings. A guided boat trip to a neighboring reef on day eleven adds the chance of mantas, which feed in the channels around the atoll between May and November.
The other days are deliberately unstructured. Spa treatments can be taken in the villa rather than at the central pavilion. A private dining setup on day twelve, either a sandbank picnic at lunchtime or a candlelit dinner on the beach, is the trip’s closing image. On day thirteen the speedboat returns you to Malé in time for the flight.

Speak with Do Not Disturb to plan your Kerala and Maldives trip.