Where to Stay in Tirur, State of Kerala

What is Tirur known for?

Tirur is one of the main business centres of Malappuram district and a trading town for electronics and seafood across northern Kerala, and its railway station, built in 1861, is the oldest in the state. Scholarship came first, though. The Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics was centred in and around Tirur Taluk, and the mathematicians it produced are the town's older claim.

What are the main landmarks in Tirur?

Tirur railway station is the town's monument as much as its transport. Built in 1861, it is the oldest in Kerala, and the fact that almost every train on the line still stops there says something about how the place was laid out. Puthiyangadi carries the memory of the Tanur principality that ran this coast before the East India Company.

South of town the Chamravattom bridge crosses the river on the road between Kochi and Kozhikode. The rest of the claim is scholarly.

What is the history of Tirur?

The medieval Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics worked in and around what is now Tirur Taluk, and Achyutha Pisharadi, Govinda Bhattathiri, and Damodara Nambudiri all belong to that tradition. Puthiyangadi was the seat of Tanur, a feudal principality that allied itself at various times with the Zamorins of Calicut. Then the companies came.

East India Company rule ran here from 1792 to 1858 and the British Raj followed until 1947, and it was under the Company that the railway arrived: the first line in Kerala opened in 1861 between Beypore and Tirur, commissioned by the Madras railway company, and Tirur railway station survives from it.

Where is Tirur?

Tirur lies on the low coastal ground of northern Kerala, west of Malappuram and south of Kozhikode, in the belt of backwater country behind the Arabian Sea. The land is barely above sea level. Ponnani, Tanur, Parappanangadi, Kuttippuram, and Valanchery ring it closely, and the Chamravattom bridge carries the coastal road across the river to the south.

What is the climate of Tirur?

Tirur has the tropical monsoon year of the Kerala coast, warm through and heavily wet when the south-west monsoon arrives. Rain defines the calendar. The town sits so near sea level that the backwaters and the paddy ground behind it fill quickly, and the second monsoon later in the year keeps the district green when much of India is dry.

How do you get to Tirur?

Rail is the obvious way in. Tirur railway station sits on the Shoranur to Mangalore section of the Southern Railway and almost every train stops there, which is unusual for a town of this size. No national highway runs through Tirur, so road traffic comes on the district roads from Malappuram, Kozhikode, Ponnani, and Kottakkal.

Calicut International Airport is the nearest airport.