States & Cities of South India Holidays

Rise early for a visit to Chennai’s vibrant and lively Koyambedu fresh vegetable and flower market and experience a riot of colours as the vendors set up for the day. The market is one of the largest of its kind in India, covering the area of three football pitches. You’ll make your way through the three sections – the flower market, fruit market and vegetable market – and discover how hundreds of tonnes of produce are transported here from numerous nearby villages.

Explore the old town of Pondicherry on foot and learn about the city’s architectural styles on this introductory walking tour. With a local guide you’ll wander along streets of Ville Blanch, also known as the ‘White Town’, which have distinctively French names. Witness beautifully-preserved colonial-era villas that have a distictive yellow and pastel colour façades as you make your way along the boulevards, lanes and quiet side streets.

Belur and Halebidu: masterpieces of the Hoysala Empire

Visit Rameshwaram, one of India’s most beautiful religious sites

You learn so much about people when you share a meal, and you learn even more if you’ve cooked it together first. On this fascinating tour you will meet your host and start with a trip to the market to buy the ingredients, vegetables such as brinjal and beans or whatever is in season. You will visit the city’s most famous market, Devaraja, which is very old and full of stalls selling produce from local farms. People enjoy seeing all the goods and learning how to choose what to buy and bargain for it.

You will return to your host’s house to prepare a typical three-course Indian meal, which will probably include local favourites such as tamarind rice, ven pongal – a lentil dish – and some vegetable curries based on what’s in season, and a Mysore dosa. It’s not a demonstration; you’re very much involved in the cooking and over four hours you will also get to learn more about what it’s like to live in the city.

Once the food is ready, it is served on banana-leaf plates in the traditional way, and you will sit down as a family to eat and talk together. It’s a relaxed, friendly experience leaving you with a true flavour of Mysore.

Find out why Hyderabad has the best biryani