Travel in Marari Beach

Marari is the beach at Mararikulam, a fishing village on the Kerala coast north of Alleppey. Fifteen of our tours run in India and three of them reach it, in three quite different ways. Only one of the three actually stays.

That one is Travel component: Marari, five days from EUR 400. You land at Kochi International Airport, a member of our team meets you, and you are driven south to your hotel at Marari. Days two, three and four contain nothing at all — the itinerary says to sunbathe, swim and spend your time exactly as you wish. On day five you are driven back to Kochi for your flight. That is the whole product, and the word component is doing real work: it is built to be added to the end of a longer trip, not flown to on its own.

On India – from North to South, fourteen days from EUR 1,840, Marari is one night. The route runs Delhi, then Agra for the Taj Mahal — closed on Fridays — and Agra Fort, then Fatehpur Sikri and on to Ranthambore, where day five is two shared safaris, one at first light and one in the afternoon, by jeep for up to six people or an open canter bus for up to twenty, whichever is available. Jaipur follows, then a domestic flight from Jaipur to Kochi on day eight. After Kochi, Thekkady and the Periyar spice hills comes a night on an Alleppey houseboat. You wake on the water on day thirteen, disembark after breakfast and drive to Marari. The itinerary is blunt about what happens then: no vehicle and no tour guide are available on arrival. Day fourteen you are taken to Kochi airport. So the beach here is an afternoon, an evening and a morning. The itinerary itself offers to extend it, which is exactly what the five-day component is for.

On The diversity of South India, twenty-five days from EUR 2,860, Marari is not a night at all. You leave the Alleppey houseboat on day eleven, go to Marari for lunch and a few hours on the sand, and continue to Kochi in the late afternoon. The hotel list confirms it — one night on the houseboat at Alleppey, two nights at The Dutch Bungalow in Kochi, nothing at Marari. The real beach stay on that trip comes right at the end and it is not in Kerala: four nights in Goa, at Beleza by the Beach.

What none of the three includes is Ayurveda. Marari is known for it and several properties there are built around it, but no Marari day on any of our itineraries contains a treatment, a consultation or a Panchakarma course. If a two-week Ayurvedic programme is the holiday you have in mind, say so when you enquire rather than after you book — it is not what these trips are. The same applies at the top of the market. Our rooms run standard, deluxe, superior and executive; there is no five-star or luxury tier. At a beach whose reputation rests on a handful of premium resorts, that is worth knowing before you picture it.

Nothing else is scheduled at Marari either — no fishing-village walk, no boat trip, no guided sightseeing. None of the three itineraries names a hotel here, so ask for the property on your quote. There is no airport, no station and no domestic flight to Marari: every arrival is by road, either from Kochi airport or, on the two longer tours, the short drive up from Alleppey. Do not confuse the two Kerala water experiences — the backwater houseboat sails from Alleppey and is a separate night.

All three trips are private and guided, with a German-speaking guide, 24-hour availability and no fixed departure dates. International flights are not included.