A 7 day Kerala itinerary perfect for first-timers

The make-up is done in such a way that you might think that the actors wear a mask.

Are you wondering what’s the best Kerala itinerary? You came to the right place.

Kerala is super green with lots of palm trees.  

We loved the seemingly endless lush green nature of Kerala, a paradise for nature lovers and for those who want to relax for a few days.

In this Kerala travel blog post, we share our complete Kerala trip itinerary.

So definitely keep reading.

Kerala tour itinerary 7 days 

In this 7 days Kerala travel itinerary you will discover most of Kerala’s highlights. 

Day 1-2: Kochi (Cochin)

If the use of Cochin and Kochi gets you confused you’re not alone. 

Both names refer to the same city.  Kochi is the official name but many people still use the unofficial Cochin which was used by the British occupiers.

Kochi is the major airport in Kerala.  The airport is served by many domestic and international flights.

Our driver was waiting for us at the arrivals hall.  In hindsight, we can now tell you that we are glad we had arranged one.

Although the distances that you will cover to visit these Kerala sights are nothing compared to the kilometers we traveled in the Northern part of India it is still a much more comfortable way of traveling.

Kochi sightseeing

I’m not sure if you have ever been to Rajasthan.

If you have we can tell you that Kerala will be a whole different experience. It could just as well be another country.   

It’s a very tropical city with lots of water and palm trees and if somebody would have told us that we were no longer in Indian but in Thailand instead we could have believed him.

Here we share the best things to do in Kochi.

Things to do in Fort Kochi

Kochi is the economic capital of the state of Kerala. 

It is a big city but the highlights are all located in the same part of the city called Fort Kochi and can be covered in a half-day.

We visited the Chinese Fishing Nets, the Pardesi Synagogue, and the St. Francis Church.  Along the way we walked through Princess street, the place to hunt for souvenirs, snoop around bookstores or relax with a drink and some food.

Next, we went to the Mattancherry Palace, also called the Dutch Palace.  It’s a beautiful small palace with some awesome mural paintings.  It can in no way be compared to any of the palaces we visited in Rajasthan.

The museum does a good job of showcasing the many differences in the life of the Maharaja between the north and the south of the country.

Kochi is also a good place to attend a Kathakali dance show. This is a story play that originated in Kerala and is still unique to this region. 

The show kept us amused for the full hour.  Although we lost the storyline somewhere halfway, the costumes, make-up, and acts alone justify attending the show.

The make-up is done in such a way that you might think that the actors wear a mask.

Where to stay in Cochin

Le Méridien Cochin

Day 3-4: Munnar

From Kochi, we continued our journey towards the hill station of Munnar.

Driving time: 112 km- approximately 4 hours.

Things to do in Munnar

Munnar is a great location to spend 2 days.  Best of all is that the temperature is really enjoyable as it is higher up in the mountains.  It might even feel a little chilly when you’re acclimatized to the temperatures in the other parts of India.

The main tourist attraction of Munnar are the many tea plantations. Did you know that India is famous for producing one of the best teas in the world? 

You can’t miss them, all roads in the area zigzag through the tea plantations. 

The sight is so spectacular that I think we may have asked our driver a hundred times to stop for a picture.

Several tea plantations are open to visitors. 

Some of them have a small museum where you can see how tea is made in the factories. 

There’s also the tea museum that tells more about the history of tea in this region.

We loved the tea plantations so much that we would almost forget the other sights of Munnar. 

Once we sort of had enough of the impressive vistas on the tea plantations we headed to the Mattupety Dam, Echo Point, and Top Station.

Except for Top Station, the sights in themselves are not that special but the roads that take you there are all the more. 

Along the way, you pass several photogenic waterfalls as well as many more incredible vistas.

Munnar is also surrounded by some beautiful national parks.

Eravikulam National Park is located half an hour outside Munnar and is the habitat of the almost extinct Nilgiri Tahr. 

Almost 2 hours North of Munnar is Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary where you can spot elephants and deer (and even leopards if you are really really lucky).

Hiking is another excellent way to witness the beauty of the region. 

Several gorgeous hikes and trekkings can be done ranging from easy to rather difficult but most are unmarked and require a guide.

In the evening you can attend the Kathakali as well as Kalaripayattu shows.  The latter is a very energetic martial arts show.

Where to stay in Munnar 

Fragrant Nature Munnar

Day 5-7: Alleppey-Kumarakom-Cochin

Kumarakom and Alleppey are both nice places to end your vacation in Kerala. They are located on opposite sides of the Vembanad lake. 

We ended our vacation with some quality time in a resort in Kumarakom but you can also spend some relaxing days in Alleppey.

We have included a short comparison between the two to help you pick the best destination for your vacation.

Driving time: 175 km- approximately 4-5h

Should you go to Alleppey or Kumarakom?

This depends on what you want to do.

If you want to cruise the backwaters and stay a night on a houseboat you might want to choose for Alleppey.

The boats leave from both locations but Alleppey has by far the biggest choice for a backwater cruise.

Kumarakom is the most flexible of the two as it allows you to combine a stay in a resort with an overnight cruise in a houseboat.  Some of the resorts have their own houseboats and offer this as a package.

You should know that although a Kerala backwater cruise lasts almost a full day the boat will only sail for about 6 hours. 

Local regulations reserve the lake for the fishermen at night, all houseboats need to dock by 5:30 PM. 

The majority of the 6 hours are also spent on the lake, most Kerala houseboats are too large to navigate the narrow channels of the backwaters where you can really experience daily life.

The small boats called Shikara offer an alternative way to see the backwaters. You can charter these per hour as a couple or family.

An advantage of these small boats is that they can navigate the narrow channels and because it’s a private tour you can ask the driver to stop if you want to take pictures.  We saw a lot of colorful birds so there’re plenty of picture opportunities.

If we would go back we would definitely opt for a Shikara again.

The Shikara boats leave from the Kavanattinkara boat jetty in Kumarakom.  This is close to the entrance of the bird sanctuary and your boat ride will actually take you along part of the edge of the sanctuary.   The sanctuary is a nice place to enjoy nature but the dense forest will make it difficult to spot birds. 

This region in Kerala is also famous for its Ayurveda massages. 

Ayurveda is a buzzword that’s popping up all over the world.  What you may not know is that it originated in India several thousand years ago.  It’s a way of life that revolves around creating peace and harmony in the body by aligning different energy channels, called chakras. 

The Ayurveda oils that are used have medicinal and detoxing properties.

You should try an Ayurveda massage if you currently suffer from insomnia or high levels of stress.

We had our massage at an Ayurveda Massage Center but you will see that most hotels offer these massages as well.

Where to stay in Alleppey 

Angel Queen Houseboat

Where to stay in Kumarakom?

Park Regis Aveda Kumarakom

Best time to visit Kerala

The best period to visit Kerala is from September to March although it can rain occasionally until December.

Kerala has an overall enjoyable climate whole year-round.  Most visitors prefer the above period because it’s warm but not too hot and there’s only a small chance to have vacation days ruined by rain. 

There are some popular activities in Kerala in this period. 

One is the Kumarakom Boat race in September and October and there is also Cochin Carnival which is widely celebrated in January.

As of April, the temperatures start rising towards 30 degrees and more.  Most tourists avoid Kerala during these months.

In general, there will be plenty of sun during the daytime. 

Chances of heavy showers and thunderstorms towards evening increase as April ends and May kicks in.

June, July, and August is monsoon season in Kerala. 

The temperatures are hot and humid and almost daily there will be some heavy showers. 

Floods are not uncommon during this time of the year so it may be difficult to get around.

Cheap Flights to Kerala

If you want to score cheap flights to Kerala we advise you to have a look at Momondo and Skyscanner.  

Both are flight aggregators that compare several hundreds of booking sites and give you an overview of the best flights and the cheapest sites to book them. 

Visa requirements for India

With the exception of residents of Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives everybody needs a visa to enter India.

Recently the country has introduced e-visas.  You can find out if you’re eligible to apply for an e-visa on the government’s e-visa website.  The website also lists the fees.  These vary by country. (see point 4 of the instructions)

This made us a little uncomfortable and we decided to apply for our e-visa through a visa agency so that our information would be subject to an additional review by the agency before it was finally submitted.

 

Take a car and driver or join an organized tour

We always prefer to explore a country on our own. Primarily for the freedom that it gives us but also because it feels more authentic if you mingle with the locals on public transportation and in the streets.

We did some research but it wasn’t really easy to find something that worked for us. 

There’re buses that go to the hill stations but you would need an additional taxi or tuk-tuk to get to your hotel as many of them are spread out across the region and not really within the limits of those stations.

Car and driver

In the end, we opted for a private chauffeured tour as it looked much easier.  

To book a private chauffeured tour you need to provide the company with your planned itinerary. This is because the price not only depends on the number of days but also on the number of kilometers that you will travel.

If you’re not sure about your itinerary for Kerala you can finetune it together with the company.

Your driver will be waiting for you at the airport in the arrivals hall.  From this point on you have all the freedom about how you fill in your days.  We were well prepared and had a list of things that we wanted to see and do. Our driver always had some extra suggestions ready.  Each evening we made the final arrangements with him for the next day.

It worked out really well and turned out to be a comfortable way to visit Kerala.

Joining an organized tour 

If you don’t have time to create your own itinerary or just don’t want to go independent, then you could also join an organized tour. 

TourRadar is an online travel agency specialized in multi-day tours.  Their well-arranged interface makes it easy to compare package tours from different operators.

They have several 7 days Kerala tour packages.

Tipping in India

There’s something strange about tipping in India and it took some time before we got a hold about when and how much we should tip.  Tipping, in India known as Baksheesh, is not common and didn’t exist before tourism became popular in India.  You will hardly ever see a local give a tip.

Westerners introduced the custom of tipping, maybe because poverty can be confronting, but our driver was quick to remind us that we didn’t need to be overly generous.

The Baksheesh has already found its way in the culture and staff in restaurants that see a lot of tourists now seem to expect tips from foreigners.

We sometimes noticed how we got treated differently than an Indian couple sitting at the table next to us.  Mostly regarding the bill because the service was equally good regardless of skin color, language, or origin.

Make sure to check the bill for a service charge before you tip. 

Some restaurants will add this automatically, others don’t. 

We did try to hand the tip subtly to our waiter because we often noticed how restaurant managers were quick to collect the tips that were left on the table and they just disappeared in their own pockets.

The tipping policy was not any more clear in hotels. 

We noticed how luxury hotels seemed to have a no-tipping policy. 

We had some small rupees handy (the guideline is 50 rupees per bag) each time we arrived in a hotel but the porters in most luxury hotels were very fast to leave to the room. We often didn’t have the chance to hand over the tip. 

On the occasions where we did, they were overly grateful.   

Less luxurious hotels often showed a completely different picture. 

Hotel porters in these hotels would put on a whole show and acted like our bags weighed at least 50kg each. 

They clearly expected a tip and did not make a start to leave the room until we handed them the Baksheesh. 

We tipped the first group with pleasure, but the 2nd group gave us a bad feeling.

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” 

If you have a car with a driver it is also expected that you tip your driver for good service. 

Our driver was always on time and even acted as a guide whenever he could. 

He would tell us more about the places that we visited and would always offer suggestions about the places where we could go to. 

If you’re happy with the services of your driver the suggested tip is 200 INR per day per person. 

If you’re sharing a driver with a larger group you can lower these amounts, a tip of 800INR/day is very generous.

Scams in India

We encountered various small scams but luckily nothing that was too bad.

Most of them occurred in Rajasthan but you will be confronted with them in all public and touristic places all over India, even in temples.

Overall we had the impression that things weren’t as bad in Kerala as in Rajasthan but we prefer to share our tips anyway.

Know how much you need to pay

We experienced how Indians shamelessly dared to ask a twentyfold of the official price for snacks or drinks. 

A coke in an ordinary Indian supermarket was suddenly more expensive than what we would pay in a fancy bistro along the Champs-Elysée. 

Although you clearly know that this cannot be correct it’s hard to negotiate a fair price if you do not know this price. 

After we overpaid once our driver showed us where could find the official price.

We visited most sites with our driver and when we did he told us the entry fees we needed to pay. 

Most of the time these were also clearly indicated at the ticket offices. Prices for foreigners are more expensive than those for locals. 

Luckily the difference is not that big here than it was in the North where foreigners often paid the fifteenfold or twentyfold of locals.

Most entrance fees can be paid with a credit card or cash. 

Monuments that are run by the government often have some discount for credit card payments. 

 When paying cash make sure to check your change, short-changing is not uncommon in India.

Stay healthy

Maybe it was the temperature that was slightly more pleasant or maybe the kitchen hygiene is just better, whatever the reason was, once we arrived in Kerala we were released of the famous Delhi belly.

We still obeyed the following rules:

The country offers perhaps the world’s most fabulous choice of vegetarian food so it may be a good choice to go veggie for the duration of your stay in India.

Undercooked or rotten meat can do a lot more harm than a badly prepared vegetarian dish.

Money

Expenses abroad can be seriously inflated by fees from your bank or credit card.  That’s why I’m a huge fan of my N26 account.  

The account is available to most EU residents.

 The checking account is free as well as the associated Mastercard and there’s no exchange rate provision when you use to card for payments abroad. 

There’s a 1,7% exchange rate provision when you withdraw money abroad but even that is free with the premium Black Mastercard. 

The app is another great feature of the card, you can follow your expenses in real-time and instantly block your card if you see any signs of fraud.

It doesn’t matter so much for small notes (anything up to 100INR) but don’t accept any notes over 100 that are damaged or have been written on. 

We had one 500 rupee note with some yellow marks on it and it took us a while before somebody wanted to accept it.

Hotels

We stayed in both 3, 4, and 5-star hotels. 

The level of service in all of them was excellent but we noticed how the cleanliness was significantly lower in 3-star hotels. 

We found dust on the shelves, old worn towels, raffled carpet in the corridors, sticky tables in the restaurant, and pigeon poop all around the pool. 

What we didn’t find was toilet paper in the public toilets. 😊 Not what we would expect from a 3-star hotel but you have to keep in mind that the standards for cleanliness are different in India.

Indian cities are often very hectic and noisy and we were often happy that we could relax in a comfortable hotel after a busy day.

Travel Insurance 

Last but not least… I’m not sure how good or bad Indian hospitals are. 

I do want to believe that they have a higher standard of cleanliness than the average Indian restaurant but still, I rather don’t experience it myself.

We never had anything serious happen on any of our journeys around the world but we never take any risks, better safe than sorry…  That’s why we always travel with good travel insurance.

If you don’t have travel insurance yet, check out HeyMondo or Safetywing. Both companies over good travel insurance for a competitive price.

Conclusion

We had an amazing week in Kerala.

The backwaters are incredibly beautiful and although this is the third time that we visit tea plantations they keep on inspiring us to snap hundreds of pictures.

Kerala has everything you need for a lovely vacation. 

There’re fantastic hotels in all price classes.

One thing I noticed about hotels in India is that the service is always excellent.  Cleanliness is somewhat troublesome in 3-star hotels (we did not stay below 3 stars) but the service remains spotless.

Nature lovers as we are we were definitely charmed by the beautiful nature of the state. 

If we would come back we would certainly do some trekkings and maybe even try one of the bounty beaches to relax afterward.

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