State of Kerala, India — Towns & Travel Guide

What is State of Kerala known for?

Kerala runs down India's south-western edge, a narrow green strip pinned between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea. Kerala is shaped by water above all. A chain of brackish lagoons and canals known as the Kerala backwaters threads the coast for hundreds of kilometres, and slow houseboat cruises through them are the image most travellers carry away.

Inland the land climbs fast into the Western Ghats, where tea and spice estates cover the slopes around hill towns like Munnar. The state is also the home of Ayurveda, of the masked dance-drama Kathakali, and of Onam, the ten-day harvest festival that marks its calendar.

Where is State of Kerala?

Kerala forms a long, narrow band down the south-western coast of India, wedged between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea. It is never wide. The Arabian Sea runs the whole western edge, while the Western Ghats wall off the eastern side, dividing Kerala from Tamil Nadu on the far slopes. Karnataka lies to the north.

Between the mountains and the sea sit the coastal lowlands, and it is here that the Kerala backwaters spread, a maze of lagoons, shallow lakes and canals fed by the rivers coming off the hills. Forty-four rivers drain the state, and all but three flow west from the Western Ghats down to the Arabian Sea. The highest ground is inland and southern.

Anamudi rises to 2695 metres in the Ghats, the tallest peak in southern India, and around it the ranges hold the tea country of Munnar and the forests of the Periyar reserve. The coast itself, the old Malabar Coast, is low, wet and thickly settled, a green ribbon of palm groves and paddy. Distances here are short but the land changes fast, climbing from sea-level backwater to misted mountain in the space of a single morning's drive.

Water is the constant.

What is State of Kerala like?

Kerala thinks of itself as a place apart, and Malayalam, the language spoken by almost everyone here, is a large part of why. The state was drawn along that language when it was formed, and Malayalam carries a literature, cinema and press that give the region a strong single identity. Performance runs through the culture.

Kathakali, the masked dance-drama with its towering costumes and painted faces, was born here and stages the old Hindu epics through gesture and eye. The state is also the recognised home of Ayurveda, and its treatment centres draw visitors from across the world to the coast and the hills. Onam ties the year together.

For ten days each harvest the whole state marks the festival with flower carpets, shared feasts and snake-boat races run down the backwater channels. Centuries of trade shaped the rest. Pepper and cardamom drew Arab, Chinese and European merchants to Kochi and the Malabar Coast, and the churches, mosques and old synagogue of the trading ports still stand among the Hindu temples.

That layering gives Kerala a plural, outward-looking character that sets it apart from much of the rest of India.

What is the history of State of Kerala?

Kerala took its present shape on 1 November 1956, when the Malayalam-speaking lands were joined into a single state under India's linguistic reorganisation. The name is old. The state is new.

Its territory brought together the old princely regions of Travancore and Cochin with the Malabar district to the north, uniting people who had traded pepper and spice with the wider world for more than two thousand years. That deep trading past, drawing Romans, Arabs, Chinese and Europeans to the Malabar Coast, left Kerala unusually plural long before it became one state.

What is the climate of State of Kerala?

Kerala has a hot, wet tropical climate, and rain is the thing that orders the year. Two monsoons soak it. The south-west monsoon breaks over the coast around June and drops most of the state's rain, while a lighter north-east monsoon returns in October and November.

Catching the incoming cloud off the Arabian Sea, the Western Ghats wring it out, which is why the hills stay green and the state counts among the wettest corners of India. Coast and lowlands stay warm and humid through the year; the high country around Munnar runs markedly cooler.

How do you get to State of Kerala?

Most visitors reach Kerala by air. Kochi is the main door in, and the city's Cochin airport handles the largest share of arrivals for the backwaters, the hill stations and the spice country beyond. Thiruvananthapuram in the south and Kozhikode in the north add two more international gateways.

Trains run the coast. The main railway line and the coastal highway link Kochi with the capital and the northern towns, while roads climb the Western Ghats to Munnar and the Periyar reserve.