One of the best ways to get under the skin of this steamy South Indian state is to stay in one of Kerala’s many family-hosted homestays. Most of those we visited are set among the spice farms and coconut groves of the coastal backwaters or, inland, in the rubber belt – a strip of rubber plantations on the lowland slopes of the Western Ghats. This is our pick of the best…
In the foothills of South India’s mountainous Western Ghats, life on Kerala’s rubber plantations is modelled on the old days of the British Raj. But things are beginning to change. Here, the local community get ready for a social evening at 100-year-old institution the Mundakayam Club.
In the foothills of South India’s mountainous Western Ghats, rubber-plantation homestays are an invitation to explore a way of life pioneered by British planters a century or so ago.
Founded by Comrade A. K. Gopala Krishnan and 2,000 members of the India Coffee Board Worker’s Co-operative Society, Kerala’s collection of Indian Coffee Houses formed one of the world’s first fast food chains when it opened in 1958. We go behind the scenes to see the preparation of their ‘delicious caterings’ in action.