India
Other suggested itineraries
South India - Karnataka & Kerala
The following are examples Remote Lands’ recommended activities that can be incorporated into our clients’ bespoke itineraries.
Destinations include: Bangalore, Mysore, Nagarhole & Bandipur national parks, Kodagu, Cochin and Tellicherry.
Bangalore
Drive for one hour to Shreyas, a boutique property-cum-wellness center, located in the idyllic outskirts of this city famous for its plethora of engineers.
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.
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 the property's 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 4 p.m. 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 in addition to the property's small dairy farm, which houses the healthiest looking cows you'll have seen thus far in India.
Your final dinner at Shreyas will be a specially prepared meal served to you in a thatched pavilion in the organic garden. Toast the end of your journey in this idyllic environment.
^Top
Mysore
Magical Mysore was once one of the richest cities in India. Revel in its affluent history with a privately guided tour of the royal palace, built during the late 19th century and combining Rajput, Hindu and high-Victorian architectural design elements. The resulting style is known as Indo-Sarcenic, and is exclusive to the region. The palace features the finest of colonial-era riches: teak wood from Burma, tiles from Portugal, chandeliers from Czechoslovakia, crystal from Belgium and marble from Italy.
Have a private dinner with Mysore’s 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.
Visit a sari silk weaving mill and meet with the owner to see how intricate patterns, hallmarks of luxurious fabric from Mysore, are woven through a complex punch-card system.
Spend a morning wandering around Mysore’s fantastic fruit and vegetable market with the prince’s personal assistant, who runs errands for the family daily here. Learn how to roll incense sticks or purchase fragrant fennel seeds, learning the Indian way to freshen one’s breath after a meal.
Breakfast on a crispy dosa and various small plates of snacks at a local chaat place filled with locals at all hours of the day.
Stay at 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.
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 your meal.
^Top
Nagarhole & Bandipur national parks
Drive to Bheeramballi village along the Kabini reservoir, which forms a natural boundary between Nagarhole National Park and Bandipur National Park, where you will spend a few days on safari. 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 very 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. Species include malabar pied hornbill, green imperial pigeon, spot-bellied eagle owl, white-bellied woodpecker, and many more.
Have a private dinner prepared for you on the terrace of your pool villa, which overlooks the serene Kabini reservoir.
Embark on a boat safari along the Kabini in Bandipur National Park. Here you will have the opportunity to observe the marsh crocodile and water-borne birds, species rarely seen on vehicle safaris. There are also 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.
Visit with a Kuruba family, whose ancestors lived in the national parks before they came under governmental control. 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.
^Top
Kodagu
Check in to School Estate, a lovely home perched on a 200-acre plot of land resplendent with cardamom and black pepper plants.
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 a peeche kathi, an ornamented dagger that can be worn by men on their waistbands.
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.
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.
^Top
Cochin
The sleepy port town of Cochin in the state of Kerala is a melting pot of architecture, cuisine and culture.
Meet an affable and welcoming woman who is an expert chef in the Syrian-Christian tradition and graciously opens her home to those who are genuinely interested in learning how to cook.
Visit the historic Paradesi Synagogue, which was built in 1568. Cochin Jews are so few 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.
Visit Cochin’s famed bay, where Chinese fishing nets continue to be operated by hand. Get a 20-second upper body workout by helping fishermen 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.
Explore the backwaters of Kerala from a houseboat. 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.
After cruising 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.
^Top
Tellicherry
Drive to Ayesha Manzil, a 150-year old colonial mansion upon a cliff above the Arabian sea, and a bastion of culinary magic on the Malabar Coast. The property is owned by a sweet, warm couple native to this part of Kerala. 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.
Head into town to see a Theyam, a local ritual performed daily and attended by Muslims, Hindus and Christians alike. This spectacular dance performance can be a bit difficult to follow, so your guide will fill you in as the action unfolds before you.
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. Weapons involved in advanced kalarippayat include the flexible sword, long wooden sticks and shields. Meet the studio's master and learn some basic moves from him.
Rise early to explore the nearby coastal fish and produce markets with your expert guide. 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.
Take a cooking class with your accommodation's host, who is so world-renowned 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 her 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.
^Top
)