South by Southwest
Other Suggested Itineraries: Maharajas, Mountains and Monks | Treasures of India's Northwest | South India - Tamil Nadu | Ladakh and Kashmir
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South by Southwest
Start in Karnataka and venture south to Kerala, India’s southwestern-most state
Day 1 - Shreyas, Bangalore
VIP arrival in Bangalore: Upon arrival in Bangalore, the capital city of Karnataka, you will be escorted through the expedited customs line and chauffeured in your private, luxury vehicle to Shreyas, a boutique property cum wellness center. Shreyas is located in the idyllic outskirts of this city famous for its booming tech sector.
Begin your stay with a soothing Ayurvedic massage or spa treatment. Dating back nearly 5,000 years, Ayurveda is an ancient health-care practice that began in India and is now widely practiced throughout the subcontinent. A compound word originating from the Sanskrit words ayur and veda that roughly translates to “knowledge of life”, Ayurveda is concerned with measures to protect ayus, which includes healthy living along with therapeutic measures that relate to physical, mental, social and spiritual harmony. This is accomplished by alleviating the body of toxins with natural ingredients, specialized massage that pinpoints problem areas and concentrate on marma (vital energy points) and meditation.
Day 2 - Shreyas, Bangalore
Have breakfast prepared especially for you by one of Shreyas’ top chefs. The property serves exquisite vegetarian fare that is as tasty as it is healthy.
Meet with a resident nutritionist and learn about how you can improve your overall wellbeing through minor changes to your diet.
Follow your meeting with a cooking demonstration with one of Shreyas’ chefs who will recommend ingredients and cooking methods to you in light of your nutritionist’s instructions.
Learn the art of meditation during an afternoon group meditation session, which takes place everyday at 4pm. All guests and staff participate, further enhancing the experience of staying in a luxurious environment that is also enriching and educational.
Walk through Shreyas’ extraordinarily varied and well-kept organic gardens with one of the property’s managers, who will point out all of the interesting herbs, vegetables and fruit growing here, in addition to the property’s small dairy farm, which houses probably the healthiest looking cows you’ll have seen thus far in India. Another interesting aspect of Shreyas is the fact that none of the staff are trained in the hospitality industry; all have had jobs in other industries before coming here. Hence, your guide through the gardens may also double as a yogi in addition to his management duties.
For dinner, enjoy a specially prepared meal served to you in a thatched pavilion in the organic garden. Toast the beginning of your journey in this idyllic environment.
Day 3 - Shreyas, Bangalore - Royal Orchid Metropole, Mysore
Take a private yoga class in the morning before breakfast.
Bid farewell to Shreyas and drive to Mysore (2 hours). On the way into town, stop by a sari silk weaving mill. Mysore is famed for its high quality sari silks with exceptionally intricate borders, whose pattern is determined by a row of punch cards. Meet with the mill’s owner and learn how to tell the difference between Mysore silk and fabrics from other parts of India.
Check in to the Royal Orchid Metropole, which was built by the Maharaja of Mysore in the early 20th century for his European guests. The heritage property has retained its old furnishings and upper and lower courtyards.
Mysore was one of the richest cities in India for a time due to its silver and ruby mines. As evidence of this splendor and spending power, the regent of Mysore during the late 19th century, Queen Kempananjammanni Vanivilasa Sanndihana, commissioned a British architect, Henry Irwin, to build a new palace here as its previous incarnations had been struck by lightning (1638) and destroyed in a fire (1897). Apparently the third time was the charm, and the palace was completed in 1912. This evening, you will see the palace, which combines Rajput, Hindu, high-Victorian architectural design elements to create a style known as Indo-Sarcenic, in all its glory. Every night, the palace is lit up with millions of light bulbs that create different effects. During the Darasa Festival, the most extravagant festival in Mysore that takes place in September and October, elephants and floats parade through the palace grounds, creating quite a spectacle.
Have a private dinner with the prince and his family, who live in the half of the palace not open to the public. He will give you a private tour of his home and detail the history of his family whose rich past also bears the weight of a curse. Every other generation of the family has had no heir, so past kings have had to adopt their nephews to continue the royal line. This may be a sensitive topic, so be sure to chat with your guide about what is appropriate conversation material before dinner.
Day 4 - Royal Orchid Metropole, Mysore
Spend the morning wandering around Mysore’s fantastic fruit and vegetable market, which is a short walk from the Metropole. The market has heaps of fresh produce – there is an entire alleyway devoted to solely to different types of bananas – and many days you will even see the prince’s PA out running errands there. In addition to fruits and vegetables, sundries such as colored powders and incense sticks are also on offer. Stop and chat with the many friendly vendors and sample their wares if you like.
See the half of the palace that is open to the public after the market; the palace opens at 10:00. No photography is allowed inside so you have to take all of your outside photos and then deposit your camera at a camera stall perpendicular to the entrance. This service costs 5 rupees and your camera is put into an individual locker and the attendant gives you a key. The palace could be an ostentatious depiction of Mysore wealth, but all of the treasures inside actually go together quite nicely. Teak wood from Burma was used for most of the doors, and there are pillars from Scotland, tiles from Portugal, chandeliers from Czechoslovakia, crystal from Belgium, marble from Italy, and floor tiles from England.
Return to your hotel and have a private “royal evening” at your hotel in the upper courtyard, complete with magicians, court jesters, snake charmers, dancers and other entertainers not normally seen at dinner in this day and age. Enjoy a full spread of Karnatakan delights for dinner.
Day 5 - Royal Orchid Metropole, Mysore - Orange County Kabini, Bheeramballi
For your last breakfast in Mysore, have a dosa and various small plates of snacks at a local chaat place filled with locals at all hours of the day. Chaat literally means “to lick or taste” in Hindi and you will see chaat stands all over the country and even in neighboring South Asian countries such as Pakistan. Sometimes it is so full that cars drive up and get their meals passed to them through their car windows on metal trays, which are laid in patrons laps or on their dashboards Empty trays are passed back to waiters – this is the Indian version of drive-through service, it appears.
Drive to Bheeramballi village along the Kabini River, which forms a natural boundary between Nagarhole National Park and Bandipur National Park where you will be on safari for the next few days. Your “base camp” will be the luxurious Orange County Kabini, opened in 2007. The property has two types of accommodation, pool huts and Jacuzzi huts, both of which are intensely private and tastefully decorated in warm earth tones.
Go on an afternoon game drive with two top naturalists. Nagarhole supports the largest density of herbivores in Asia; species include the muntjak, chital, sambar, four-horned antelope, gaur (Indian bison), wild pig, Asian elephant, common langur and the monnet macaque. Bird watching in Southern India is also unparalleled and you can “race” your naturalists in spotting beautiful wisps of color zipping through the air that might just be a malabar pied hornbill, green imperial pigeon, spot-bellied eagle owl or white-bellied woodpecker.
Have a private dinner prepared for you on the terrace of your pool villa, which overlooks the serene Kabini River.
Day 6 - Orange County Kabini, Bheeramballi
After an early breakfast, embark on a boat safari up the Kabini in Bandipur National Park. Here you will see some of the same animals that you saw yesterday from the jeep, but you will also have the opportunity to observe the marsh crocodile and water-borne birds, species rarely seen on vehicle safaris. There are pockets of backwaters along the Kabini filled with fish that are excellent places to see indigenous birds. You will also see immense clearings of formerly forested paths leading the water – these foliaged alleyways were created by herds of elephants. If you are lucky, you will see them cooling off in the river from your boat.
In the afternoon, visit with a Kuruba family whose ancestors lived in the national parks before they came under governmental control. They were relocated to settlements just outside the parks and continue to live off the land as farmers, although they presumably have more modern comforts in their new homes, many of which are complete with satellite dishes. Chat with them over coffee about their intriguing culture, which is quite different to any of the other customs you may have witness in India due to the tribe’s centuries-long isolation amongst the predators and gentle giants you will have seen from your jeep or boat.
Day 7 - Orange County Kabini, Bheeramballi - School Estate, Kodagu
Bid farewell to the wildlife sanctuary that has been your home for the past few days and drive to Kodagu (3 hours). Formerly known as Coorg, this area is affectionately called the “Scotland of India” due to its lush rolling hills. Unlike Scotland, however, these hills are home to spice and coffee plantations, infusing the air with a delicate scent.
Check in to School Estate, a lovely home perched on a 200-acre plot of land resplendent with cardamom and black pepper plants. The home, nearly 200 years old now, once belonged to a German family and then an English rector before it was bought by the Aiyappas, an old Kodava family. Have lunch with Mrs Aiyappa, a lovely woman who is inevitably dressed in a traditional Kodava sari. These garments differ from others in India in that the seams are at the back. Legend has it that when a Kodava woman was crossing the River Cauvery, a gust of wind blew her sari askew, hence why Kodava women wear their saris as such. The fabric is pinned together with an elegant brooch on the right shoulder. More practically, it is said that in order for women to work in the plantations, they had to have both hands free; the Kodava style of sari also accomplishes this feat.
Have a fitting of a Kodava sari and a traditional Kodava men’s outfit, which makes just about anyone look dashing and debonair. It consists of a flat-top turban and a long, black wraparound robe with elbow-length sleeves worn over a collared plain white or chambray shirt. A piece of embroidered silk is tied around the man’s waist and the look is completed with a simple straight-legged pair of pants.
Over a special dinner served in School Estate’s garden, enjoy a traditional Kodava dance performance, which involves drums and peeche kathi, which is an ornamented dagger that can be worn by men on their waistbands.
Day 8 - School Estate, Kodagu
Begin your day by talking a walk through the neighboring spice plantations, where you can taste the spices off the trees. There is a wide variety of birdlife here as well, and you may even be able to recognize some of them from your safari experience.
Take a cooking class or watch a cooking demonstration of Kodavan food at School Estate. Kodavan food is so spicy that proud cooks tell other Indians that they tone their food down for non-Kodavans. If you’re feeling brave, ask your teacher to use the requisite amount of spice she would normally use. Traditional dishes include pandhi curry, which is made from pork, a definite rarity in India, kadambuttus, which are rice dumplings, and thambuttu, a dessert offering of mashed bananas mixed with ghee, powdered cardamom and grated coconut.
Day 9 - School Estate, Kodagu – Taj Malabar or Malabar House, Cochin
Drive from Kodagu to Mangalore (3 hours) and fly from Mangalore to Cochin, a melting pot of architecture, cuisine and culture due to its barrage of past visitors and residents, which include the Chinese, Dutch, English and Portuguese. It’s no wonder that the jury’s still out on how the city even got its name. Some say that it stems from the Malayalam (the local language spoken in Kerala) word cochazhi, or “small sea,” others believe that Kublai Khan dubbed it Kochi, which is its current name, following on the government’s plan to revert back to Indian cities’ pre-colonial names, and a third group insists that the name comes from the Malayalam word kaci, which means harbor.
Unwind from your journey to this sleepy port town by spending the balance of your day with the affable, welcoming Nimmy Paul. Nimmy is an expert chef in the Syrian-Christian tradition and has graciously opened her home to those who are genuinely interested in learning how to cook. Start with a typical stew, which consists of chicken, potatoes and onions simmered gently in a creamy white sauce flavored with black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, green chilies, lime juice, shallots and coconut milk. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Keralite meal of any cuisine without seafood so learn how to perfectly pan-fry pomfret, one of the most commonly eaten fish in these parts, and grill chili prawns, paired with a refreshingly tart mandarin orange juice from Nimmy’s backyard.
Check in to the storied Taj Malabar, which is on Willingdon Island. Alternatively, stay at the charming Malabar House, a boutique hotel that dates back to 1755 when Dutchman Jan Herman Clausing owned it. Spice traders, tea merchants and bankers subsequently occupied it before being turned into luxury accommodations in 1996.
Day 10 - Taj Malabar or Malabar House, Cochin
Embark on a city tour of Cochin. The city is home to a hodgepodge of architectural styles. Start at the historic Paradesi Synagogue, which was built 1568 by Malabar Yehudan Jews, or Cochin Jews. There numbers are so small today that they cannot form a minyan – a quorum of 10 men – without Jews from outside Cochin, but services are still held here, making it the oldest functioning synagogue in the commonwealth of former British colonies. Antiquities that you will see inside include the Scrolls of the Law, several gold crowns received as gifts, many Belgian glass chandeliers and a brass-railed pulpit.
Continue on to Cochin’s famed bay where Chinese fishing nets continue to be operated by hand. Get a 20-second-long arm workout by helping fisherman operate these magnificently antiquated contraptions, with giant rocks used as counterweights. If you make an exceptionally good haul, you can buy fish straight from the men manning the net and have a hawker near the Dutch House (a few minutes walk away) cook it on the spot.
Have drinks at Divine, currently the only all-Indian wine bar in existence, at Malabar House. The fact that the wine list is exclusively domestic wines is a bit of a fluke – while the property was waiting for its license to serve imported wine, it could only serve Indian wines. The concept took off and you will be able to taste the tremendous lengths Indian winemakers have gone to in making quaffable wines.
Day 11 - Taj Malabar or Malabar House, Cochin
Explore the backwaters of Kerala from a houseboat. The backwaters flow along most of Kerala’s coastline, the Malabar Coast, and are formed by 38 rivers flowing from the Western Ghats, also known as the Sahyadri Mountains. The merging of the freshwater rivers and the saltwater in the Arabian Sea creates lagoons and lakes along the coast that are home to unique marine biodiversity.
Your houseboat will take you from Alleppey to Kumarakom and back to Alleppey. When you have cruised to a delta with smaller canals, switch to a canoe, which will be manned by a backwaters resident. Glide past well-kept homes where you’ll often see women doing laundry and hear children cheekily calling out to ask for chocolates or colored pencils. The backwaters are a must-do in Kerala, and as such are quite popular with domestic and international travelers who sometimes have treats for the children they meet.
Return to Cochin in the evening and have dinner at the hotel.
Day 12 - Malabar House, Cochin - Ayesha Manzil, Tellicherry
Fly from Cochin to Calicut and then drive to Ayesha Manzil, a bastion of culinary magic on the Malabar Coast. This 150-year old colonial mansion in Tellicherry is set on a cliff above the Arabian Sea and owned by Faisa and Moosa, a sweet, warm couple native to this part of Kerala. Moosa’s grandfather bought the property from the original English owner and they converted it to a home stay property a little over 10 years ago. The entire house gives you the feeling of stepping back into time; each room has high ceilings, carved wooden double doors separating the bedroom from the dressing area, and mosquito netting on the four-poster beds. Faisa is a master of the deliciously nuanced local Mopla cuisine introduced by Malay traders. Although Tellicherry, or Thalassery as it is also called, is famed for black pepper, this spice is rarely used in Mopla dishes as the main flavoring agents provide plenty of spice already: mint, coriander, ginger, green chilies and garlic.
After a snack of coffee, tea and banana fritters on Ayesha Manzil’s balcony, head into town to see a Theyam, a local ritual performed daily and attended by Muslims, Hindus and Christians alike. This spectacular dance performance is a bit difficult to follow so your guide will fill you in as the action unfolds before you.
Return to Ayesha Manzil for a spectacular dinner. Although each dish is revelatory, the piece de resistance is Faisa’s stuffed chicken, which has a hardboiled egg inside that has absorbed the flavors of every ingredient.
Day 13 - Ayesha Manzil, Tellicherry
After breakfast, head to the storied Tellicherry cricket grounds where cricket has been played for over 200 years. The British sport has gained much traction in South Asia, so much so that the best cricketers in the world are Indian, Pakistani or Sri Lankan. Don your cricket whites and have a lesson in the sport, a game of which can sometimes take days. Take the traditional tea and lunch breaks with the team where you can chat about cricket traditions in India and trends in the sport.
Continue your sporting ways by visiting a kalarippayat studio. Kalarippayat is a martial art form that gave birth to the Indian circus, which is also based in Tellicherry. Although boys and girls are involved in the sport, you will mostly see young boys practicing this ancient art. There are 12 practice forms in kalarippayat that equip fighters with the types of movement and skills involved in sparring with the weapons involved in advanced kalarippayat: the flexible sword, long wooden sticks and shields and swords. The vigor with which practitioners demonstrate their skills is breathtaking and if you are exceptionally energetic after your morning of sporting, you are welcome to learn a few basic moves from the master.
Day 14 - Ayesha Manzil, Tellicherry
Rise early to walk down to the coastal fish and produce markets with Moosa. Tellicherry became famous as a port because black pepper grown in the hills had to pass through here; today, the activity and commerce you will witness is just as brisk. Buy ingredients for your cooking class with Faisa, which will begin upon your return from your morning constitutional.
Enter Faisa’s kitchen, a large yet modest and functional room in the rear of Ayesha Manzil’s first floor. Neat rows of ingredients and kitchen tools, many of which are gifts from past students who have come from New York, Geneva and Tokyo, line the stainless steel countertops. Faisa is so renowned the world over that she is often hosted in Europe by fans of her cuisine who love nothing more than a chance to enjoy her fish biriyani, spicy prawns and bananas with cardamom syrup closer to home. Learn the secrets of Faisa’s techniques during your one-on-one class, and toast the end of your journey together on the front terrace where you will see a brilliant sunset over the Arabian.
Day 15
Bid farewell to Faisa and Moosa and drive back to Calicut. Fly from Calicut to Bombay to meet your connecting flight home.