Pathanamthitta · Kerala
Aranmula, Gavi and the forest
Pilgrim country, snake boats, and the road up into the reserve.
When to come
September to March. Onam, in August or September, is when the boats race.
How long
A day on the way between the backwaters and the hills, or a night at Gavi.
Getting there
Aranmula is an hour and a half from Alappuzha. Gavi is four hours from Kochi airport.
The least visited district in the south, and the most visited place in Kerala is in it: Sabarimala, where several million pilgrims walk up through the forest between November and January. It is not a sight to be seen — it is somebody else's devotion, and the season is a reason to avoid the roads rather than to use them.
Aranmula is the other thing. A temple on the Pamba, the snake boat race at Onam where the boats carry a hundred rowers and the village is on the bank shouting, and the metal mirror that is made nowhere else on earth — polished bronze, not glass, by four or five families who still know how.
Gavi is up in the hills, on the Periyar reserve's western edge, and a day there is forest, elephants, and nothing to buy.
Pathanamthitta, in photographs
Worth your time, or not?
Tell us how many days you have and who is coming, and we will tell you whether Pathanamthitta belongs in them — and what to leave out to make room for it.