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The Rough Guide to South India and Kerala PDF

870 Pages·2017·78.82 MB·English
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CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Where to go When to go Things not to miss Itineraries BASICS Getting there Visas Getting around Accommodation Eating and drinking Health The media Festivals and holidays Sports Outdoor activities Yoga, meditation and ashrams Culture and etiquette Shopping Travelling with children Travel essentials THE GUIDE Mumbai Maharashtra Goa Karnataka Andhra Pradesh and Telangana Kerala Tamil Nadu The Andaman Islands CONTEXTS History Religion Music and dance Wildlife Books Language Glossary MAPS AND SMALL PRINT HOW TO USE THIS ROUGH GUIDE EBOOK 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 you’re on the road. From the table of contents, you can click straight to the main sections of the ebook. Start with the Introduction, which gives you a flavour of South India and Kerala, with details of what to see, what not to miss, itineraries and more - everything you need to get started. This is followed by Basics, with pre- departure tips and practical information, such as flight details and health advice. The guide chapters offer comprehensive and in-depth coverage of the whole of South India, including area highlights and full-colour maps featuring all the sights and listings. Finally, Contexts fills you in on history, religion, music, dance, wildlife and books, and includes a handy Language section. Detailed area maps feature in the guide chapters and are also listed in the dedicated map section, 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, we’ve flagged up our favourite places – a perfectly sited hotel, an atmospheric café, 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 you’ll need for your time away. INTRODUCTION TO SOUTH INDIA & KERALA Though its borders are uncertain, there’s no doubt that South India, the tapering half of the country’s 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. ZOOM TOP ZOOM BOTTOM FACT FILE South India is referred to in some of India’s oldest inscriptions as Dravidadesa, “Land of the Dravidians”, referring to the ethnically and linguistically distinct people of the South. The South’s Western Ghats mountain range is one of the most biodiverse places on earth with over 500 bird species and 139 mammals. Three of the the five largest cities in India are found in the South – Mumbai (12.4m), Bengaluru (8.4m) and Hyderabad (6.7m). Goans consume 40 million coconuts per year and the fruit finds its way into virtually every dish. Languages spoken in the South include Tamil (Tamil Nadu), Telugu (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana), Kannada (Karnataka) and Malayam (Kerala). India’s greatest sporting hero, the cricketing master Sachin Tendulkar was born and raised in Mumbai. The film studios of Mumbai (Bollywood) and Chennai (Kollywood) make more movies than any other country with up to 2000 releases annually. 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 region’s extensive rail network moves vast numbers of people at all times of the day and night, and if a train isn’t 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 region’s 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 Where to go Your first impression of South India is likely to be Mumbai, the arrival point for most international flights. While the city gets a pretty bad press, and most people pass straight through, those who stay find themselves witness to the reality of modern-day India, from the deprivations of the city’s slum-dwellings to the glitz and glamour of Bollywood movies. The surrounding state of Maharashtra, though not culturally or linguistically part of the South, has plenty of attractions including the extraordinary caves of Ellora and Ajanta and the thriving city of Pune, once a Raj-era retreat, and now a buzzing metropolis with a hip eating scene. The other major gateway to the region is Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu, in the deep South, which is a slightly less stressful place to start your trip. Although it’s another major metropolis bursting at the seams, hidden under its surface are artful gems such as regular public performances of classical music and dance. With regular flights and ferries to Port Blair, Chennai is also the major springboard for the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago ringed by coral reefs and crystal-clear seas, over 1000km east of the mainland in the Bay of Bengal. The majority of visitors’ first stop after Chennai is Mamallapuram, an ancient port littered with weatherworn sculpture sites, including the technicolor Shore temple. To get right off the beaten track you only have to head inland to Kanchipuram, whose innumerable Hindu shrines span the golden age of the illustrious Chola kingdom. Back on the coast, the former French colony of Puducherry retains a distinctly Gallic feel, particularly in its restaurants. Most travellers press on south to Madurai, the region’s most atmospherically charged city, where the mighty Meenakshi-Sundareshwar temple presides over a quintessentially Tamil swirl of life. The two other most compelling destinations in Tamil Nadu are the island of Rameshwaram, whose main temple features a photogenic series of pillared corridors, and Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of India, where the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea flow together. The dark shadows visible on the horizon from here mark the start of the Western Ghats, lush mountains which stretch for more than 1000km in a virtually unbroken chain all the way to Mumbai, forming a sheer barrier between Tamil Nadu and neighbouring Kerala. The hill stations of Udhagamandalam (or Ooty, as it’s still better known) and Kodaikanal, established by India’s former colonial rulers as retreats from the summer heat of the plains, attract hordes of Indian visitors in the run-up to the rains, but see plenty of foreign tourist traffic during the winter, too.

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