Rough Guides - The Rough Guide to South India and Kerala

This Rough Guide is one of a new generation of informative and easy-to-use travel-guide ebooks that guarantees you make the most of your trip. An essential tool for pre-trip planning, it also makes a great travel companion when youre on the road.

From the section.

Detailed area maps feature in the guide chapters and are also listed in the , accessible from the table of contents. Depending on your hardware, you can double-tap on the maps to see larger-scale versions, or select different scales. There are also thumbnails below more detailed maps in these cases, you can opt to zoom left/top or zoom right/bottom or view the full map. The screen-lock function on your device is recommended when viewing enlarged maps. Make sure you have the latest software updates, too.

Throughout the guide, weve flagged up our favourite places a perfectly sited hotel, an atmospheric caf, a special restaurant with the author pick icon . You can select your own favourites and create a personalized itinerary by bookmarking the sights, venues and activities that are of interest, giving you the quickest possible access to everything youll need for your time away.

Though its borders are uncertain, theres no doubt that South India, the tapering half of the countrys mighty peninsula, differs radically from the landlocked North. In the South, the coconut groves seem a deeper green and the rice paddies positively luminescent, the faces are a darker brown and the vermilion marks smeared over them arrestingly red. The landscape varies from tropical beaches that hug towering Ghats in the west, to the arid Deccan plateau that descends into fertile plains in the east. Under a sun whose rays feel concentrated by a giant magnifying glass, the ubiquitous colours of South India of silk saris, shimmering classical dance costumes, lurid movie posters and frangipani flowers radiate with a life of their own.

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Despite its recent rush to modernity and pockets of over-development, South India remains one of the most relaxed parts of Asia to explore. It is also among the easiest. In all but the remotest districts, accommodation is plentiful, clean and inexpensive by Western standards. Delicious street food is available from nearly every roadside vendor. While journey times can be long, the regions extensive rail network moves vast numbers of people at all times of the day and night, and if a train isnt heading where you want to go, a bus almost certainly will be. Furthermore, South Indians are the most garrulous and inquisitive of travellers, and train rides are always enlivened by conversations that invariably begin with the refrain of Coming from? or What is your native place?

It is a credit to the regions legendary capacity for assimilating new ideas that the modern and traditional thrive side by side. Walking through central Bengaluru, you could brush shoulders with an iPhone-toting software developer one moment and a trident-wielding ascetic the next, while rickety bicycles mingle with luxury cars. There are, of course, the usual Subcontinental travel hassles: interminable queues, packed buses and constant encroachments on your personal space. Yet, just when your nerves feel stretched to breaking point, South India always offers something that makes the effort worthwhile: a glimpse of an elephant from a train window; a sumptuous vegetarian meal delicately arranged on a fresh banana leaf; or a hint of fragrant cardamom in your tea after a night dancing on a Goan beach.

ANJUNA BEACH, GOA