Once you have done the classic route — Kochi, Munnar, the houseboat — and you find yourself, as many travellers do, wanting to come back, this is the second trip we recommend. Northern Kerala is quieter, wilder, more food-obsessed and considerably less photographed than the south. It is also where some of the most extraordinary cultural experiences in India quietly take place.
The chapter below is your introduction. The route can be done in five days or five weeks; the experiences are the same.
Wayanad — the high coffee country
Wayanad sits in the northern hills at around 2,000 feet, draped in coffee, pepper and cardamom estates, and ringed by the Western Ghats. The nearest airport is Kozhikode (Calicut), about two and a half hours' drive away up a series of switchbacks. There are no luxury hotels here — only homestays run by families who have been farming these slopes for four generations, and a handful of small eco-resorts. This is part of the appeal.
Spend three nights. Walk in the early mornings before the mist lifts. Visit the Edakkal Caves, where 6,000-year-old petroglyphs are carved into the rock. Climb the Brahmagiri ridge for the view across into Karnataka. Eat puttu and kadala curry for breakfast, watch the workers picking coffee cherries in the afternoon, and sleep with the windows open to the sound of tree frogs.
Kannur and the Theyyam
From Wayanad it is two hours' drive west to the coast at Kannur. This is the heartland of Theyyam — an ancient ritual-performance tradition in which a man from a specific community becomes possessed by a deity, dressed in elaborate costume and towering headdresses, and dances for hours in a village shrine. There are more than 400 distinct Theyyam forms. The season runs from mid-December through mid-April. Each performance begins in the small hours of the morning, often around three or four, and is open to anyone willing to sit on the ground in the dark and wait.
These are religious events, not tourist shows. There is no ticket. You ask at your homestay which kavu (sacred grove) is hosting a performance that night, you arrive quietly, you remove your shoes, you sit, and you watch. Within an hour you will have witnessed something more powerful than almost anything else you can see in India.
Stay at one of the small heritage homestays around Kannur — Costa Malabari, the Kannur Beach House — and ask your host to help you find the right night. They always know.
Kozhikode and the Malabar table
Two hours south of Kannur lies Kozhikode (Calicut), Kerala's food capital. UNESCO designated it a City of Gastronomy in 2023, and the recognition is overdue. This is the home of Mappila cuisine — the kitchen of Kerala's centuries-old Muslim community, with its distinctive biryanis, rice-flour breads, and slow-cooked meats finished with rose petal and dried lime.
Eat at Paragon (the famous old institution near the railway station), Salkara, and at least one of the small unmarked seafood places along Beach Road. Walk the SM Street for snacks. Try halwa from Sweet Meat Street. Save room. The food alone is reason enough to come north.
Four small things we'd build the trip around.
A four-generation homestay in Wayanad
Coffee on the verandah, walks in the cardamom forest, dinner with the family.
A Theyyam at four in the morning
Possession, fire, drums, and an experience you will not forget.
Mappila biryani in Kozhikode
Lighter and more aromatic than any other biryani in India.
Muzhappilangad drive-in beach
Four kilometres of hard sand. The only beach in India you can drive on.