Travel in South India

Three itineraries carry the South India tag, and they are not variations on one route. South India – Exotic World runs 11 days, Chennai to Kochi, from EUR 1,570. The diversity of South India runs 25 days and keeps going past Kerala into Karnataka and on to Goa, from EUR 2,860. India – from North to South runs 14 days, spends its first week in Rajasthan and only reaches the south on day eight, from EUR 1,840. All three are private and built around your own dates — no fixed departures, no group to join — and a German-speaking guide is included on every one. International flights are not.

The Tamil Nadu temple circuit is on two of the three. Both the 11-day and the 25-day begin in Chennai — St George's Fort, St Thomas Basilica, the 37-metre gopuram of the Kapaleeshwara Temple — then drive the Coromandel Coast to Mahabalipuram, a 7th- and 8th-century port whose coastal, monolithic and rock-cut cave temples have been a UNESCO site since 1985. The pacing differs: the 11-day covers Chennai and Mahabalipuram in one day, the 25-day gives Mahabalipuram two nights and a free afternoon. Both stop at Pondicherry, passing Auroville and the Sri Aurobindo ashram on the way in and ending the day in the French Quarter. Both stand under the Brihadishvara Temple at Tanjore, 61 metres of Chola stonework dedicated to Shiva, where elephants give their blessing to visitors. And both give Madurai two days: the evening ceremony at the Meenakshi Temple, with its pilgrims, devotional music and elephant procession, then the Thirumalai Nayakka Palace and the flower markets the next morning.

Around Tanjore they diverge. The 11-day bases itself in Chettinad, taking in the Airavateswarar Temple at Darasuram and a day trip to Tiruchirappalli for the Srirangam complex, the Jambukeshwarar Temple and the Rock Fort Temple on its hill. The 25-day goes to Kumbakonam and Gangaikonda Cholapuram instead, and adds the Schwartz Memorial Church in Tanjore, built in 1779 by a German missionary.

Kerala is the stretch all three share, though not in the same order. Thekkady, in the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, gets two nights on each: a boat trip on Periyar Lake when the water level allows, a walk along the park boundary — outside the park, not inside — a drive through the tea, pepper and cardamom plantations of the spice hills with one plantation visited, and an evening Kalaripayattu demonstration. Then one night on a houseboat, boarding at Alleppey. Kochi is on all three — Fort Cochin, the Mattancherry Palace, the synagogue, Vasco da Gama's tomb in St Francis Church, the Chinese fishing nets, the spice and antique markets, and Kathakali in the evening — but the 14-day takes it first, before the hills, rather than last.

Only the 25-day carries on past Kerala. It climbs to Ooty on the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, India's only rack railway, then crosses into Karnataka for Mysore Palace and Chamundi Hill, the 18-metre Bahubali statue at Shravanabelagola up more than 600 steps, the Hoysala carving at Belur and Halebid, the Vijayanagar ruins at Hampi, and the Chalukya temples at Aihole, Pattadakal and Badami. It closes with four nights on the Goa coast, left free — no guide, no vehicle.

India – from North to South is the odd one out. Delhi, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Ranthambore and Jaipur come first, then a domestic flight from Jaipur to Kochi on day eight, the only internal flight in the three. It skips Tamil Nadu entirely and finishes with a night on the beach at Marari, where again no guide or vehicle is provided. Pick it for the Taj Mahal and the backwaters in one fortnight, not for the temple towns.