In many respects, India’s south-westernmost state – Kerala – is India’s “best”.
By area, Kerala is just 57% the size of Tasmania.
By population, it exceeds Tasmania circa sixty times over; the entire population of Australia is less than 75% of Kerala’s.
Kerala includes both the lowest place in all of India and its highest point, south of the Himalayas.
Collectively, Kerala’s citizens are much more diverse, healthier, and more highly educated than are “average” Indians.
Keralans also eat some of the world’s most delicious food.
Photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken at 12.42 pm on 20 February 2023, as we motored along a small section of Kerala’s “backwaters”, near India’s longest lake.
Our accommodation was adjacent to Vembanad Lake, and only accessible by water.
Here, in the Kuttanad region, is one of the few places on earth where rice grows below sea level.
It is hot, humid, fecund, and beautiful….and circa 160 kilometres distant from the much cooler peak of Annamudi – peninsular India’s high point at 2,695 metres above sea level.
(Annamudi is 467 metres higher than Australia’s Mount Kosciuszko)
Over three decades, I have visited Kerala three times.
I am far from alone in considering Kerala one of “our” planet’s most likeable and interesting destinations.