The Rough Guide to South India 5

by Rough Guides, David Abram, Mike Ford

The Rough Guide to South India is the ultimate handbook to this spectacular region. The full-colour section introduces South India’s highlights from cruising on Kerala’s teeming Kuttanad backwater region to the madness of the Maharasthran capital. This fully–updated 5th edition includes expanded coverage of Kerala and detailed accounts of all the attractions including the majestic temples of Tamil Nadu, the world most visited religious site of Venkatesshvara Temple, and the looming balfries and baroque churches of Old Goa. You’ll find all the practical advice you’ll need whether you’re trekking in the Cardamom Hills, scuba-diving in the Andamans or traveling around Mumbai.The guide comes complete with critical reviews of all the best places to stay, eat, practice yoga, and includes maps and plans for every area. The Rough Guide to South India is like having a local friend plan your trip!

Genres: Travel, Reference

816 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Founded in 1982, Rough Guides Ltd is a British publisher of print and digital guide book, phrasebooks and inspirational travel reference books, and a provider of personalised trips. Since November 2017, Rough Guides has been owned by APA Publications UK Ltd, the parent company of Insight Guides.
With the company's personalised trip service encompassing over eighty destinations, and 200 guidebooks covering 180 destinations, Rough Guides is a multi-faceted travel platform, with global sales of 100 million guidebooks since their inception.

Reviews

[Arjun]

Currently perusing the content of The Rough Guide to South India and Kerala

[Magda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though its borders are uncertain, there's no doubt that South India, the tapering tropical half of this mighty peninsula, differs radically from the landlocked North. Stepping into the greenhouse humidity of Chennai or Thiruvanathapuram (Trivandrum), you enter a world far removed from the muted hues of the great Indian river plains. In the South, the coconut groves seem a deeper green and the rice paddies positively luminescent, the faces are a darker brown and the vermilion caste marks smeared over them arrestingly red. The region's heavy rainfall means that lush paddy fields and palm groves patchwork the volcanic soils during all but the hottest months. And under a sun whose rays feel concentrated by a giant magnifying glass, the ubiquitous colours of South India - of silk saris, shimmering classical dance costumes, roadside political posters and frangipani flowers - radiate with a life of their own.

Chennai boasts some of India's most sophisticated medical facilities, which is just as well, because it is officially one of the unhealthiest places in the world.

Indians from elsewhere in the country love to caricature their southern cousins as "reactionary rice growers" led by "fanatical film stars". While such stereotypes should be taken with a pinch of salt, it is undeniable that the Tamil way of life, which has evolved along a distinctive and unbroken path since prehistoric times, sets it apart from the rest of the Subcontinent. This remains, after all, one of the last places in the world where a classical culture has survived into the present - "India's Holy Land", described by Marco Polo as "the most splendid province in the world".

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Less "written for american" feeling than the lonely planet series. I brought this on our trip in 2005 - my friends had the lonely planet South india guide. Together the two books were pretty useful references for our side trips - though as we were visiting family and friends, we were well off of most paths and destinations detailed in the books.