2 weeks in the south

a2us

Hi, I've been reading this forum in preparation for my trip to India this summer after graduating from college and found a lot of useful information. This is my first time posting, and I just wanted to see if you could give me some advice on my itinerary. Some background: I've been to india a few times to visit family, but that was primarily in Delhi, and my friend is american, not having visited the country before, so this should be a brand new experience for us. We'll be flying into Mumbai the evening of May 13th, and our trip ends with a flight out of Bangalore on May 27th.

This is the general list of places we wanted to visit
Mumbai (1 day or so) and then fly to
Goa (2-3 days)
day trip to Hampi, then return to Goa
Train down to Kochi (2-3 days)
Take car for trip to Munnar for a day
Go from Kochi to either Green Magic Nature Resort or Periyar National Park
Kumarakom for Kerala backwaters overnight stay
Train to mysore/bangalore.

I know it's a really rough itinerary, but we're pretty flexible with modes of transport and what we want to see since the opportunities seem overwhelming. I wanted to see if you thought this trip seemed feasible and if anyone thought maybe we shoudl redistribute the time spent in places. Also, the Nature resort with living spaces in treess looked really cool, but also expensive. Is there a cheaper alternative that could be just as interesting at the Periyar national park?

Thanks.

tdmc

I've just returned - we had 5 days in Alleppey - Kerela backwaters. It was "just" long enough. Overnight will not be enough. I'd recommend at least 2 nights - you'll want to get out into the canals, either by canoe or houseboat or launch. Very worthwhile seeing - quite different from other places.

I heard Goa was very "toursity" so we avoided that

Maybe skip Goa, fly to Kerela (Kochi airport) taxi to Alleppey (about an hour and a half), get to Hill Stations, as well as National Park.

Alleppey - nice "little" town, good facilities in area (massage, boats) Highly recommend Palm Grove Lake Resort - in Lonely Planet - great place to stay and cheap

vandy

It will be pretty Hot & Humid on the Coast at the time you are visiting, you may want to consider spending more time in the Hill stations,Munnar,
Thekady,Kumily,before heading down to Kumarakom &
Kotayam.

Suggest you hire car & driver for Cochin - Munnar-
Kumily - Kotayam (Kumarakom).Munnar is worth a night or two as is Thekady & Kumily.

You may be able to catch train from Kotayam to
Coimbatore to Bangalore.

vandy

a2us

thanks for the info about the backwaters. we saw that goa might just be rehasing things we can see at a lot of beach resorts and would get kindof tiring. so, we'll probably just cut that down to a day or so just to see it and move on.

arunchs

Too fast, and some stretches simply can't be done at the speed you have mentioned.

1. Goa to Hampi takes 6-8 hours one way. Day trip is out of question. And Hampi needs a minimum of 2 days, and 4 days for a decent experience.

2. Munnar is also more than a day trip. You can manage to go to Munnar from Kochi and come back in a day, but you would not be able to do anything/see much.

3. Goa is a beach place, mostly to relax and kill time. Revisit your 2-3 days.

The most important thing - all these places will be really hot. May is not exactly a good time to go. Instead, simply consider spending all your time in Munnar and Kodaikanal region.

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a2us

i'll definitely look into cutting down the locales then. We starte off with just a big list of potential things we wanted to visit/see and are whittling it downs, which is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought since there seems to be so much.

a2us

I saw thsi website had some interesting packages that would relieve some of the headaches of organizing a trip to a bunch of the southern places. does anyone know anything about the cheaper ones and if the travel packages companies are trustworthy?
http://www.keralatourism.org/travell...33230&pageno=1

n kumar

Hampi will be really hot in may and so is kochi and Goa with nearly 90 % humidity. It will be cool in munnar, kodai and to some extent thekady.

reneeautumn

Great advice, all! I've marked all your suggestions in my Lonely Planet.