The Rough Guide to South India

by David Abram, Devdan Sen, Mike Ford

The Rough Guide to South India is the ultimate handbook to this fascinating region. The guide opens with a full-colour section introducing the authors'' highlights with some inspirational photography and essential information on the region''s diverse attractions, from enjoying an ayurvedic massage to exploring the ruins at Hampi. The Rough Guide offers comprehensive and practical advice on everything from finding the best places to stay and the most comfortable means of transport, to spotting elephants in the Cardamon Hills and negotiating Mumbai. The guide also provides a lucid and informative insight into South India''s history, religions, architecture, music and dance.

Genres: Travel, Reference

752 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Freelance travel writer David Abram was born and brought up in south Wales and the Mendip Hills of Somerset. His first foray into the Corsican mountains came in 1986, during the sabbatical year of a French degree, when he stumbled upon some waymarks and followed them blindly for two days until wild pigs polished off his supplies. Since then, as an anthropologist and author of the Rough Guide to India, he's walked extensively in the Himalayas, Europe and North America but still regards Corsica as a benchmark trekking destination.

Reviews

[Arjun]

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

[Magda]

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]

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.