Kochi (Fort Kochi)

Fort Kochi is walkable, layered and unusually easy for a first trip to India — it is one of the few Indian towns where you can simply wander without a plan. The Chinese fishing nets on the waterfront are the postcard, and they are also mostly a photo stop now rather than a working fishery. Go anyway, at dusk, but do not expect a spectacle. Behind them, St Francis Church holds the spot where Vasco da Gama was buried before his remains went home, and the Paradesi Synagogue in Jew Town has a floor of hand-painted Chinese tiles, no two the same. Kathakali is the thing worth booking. The good venues start an hour early so you can watch the performers put the make-up on — that hour explains the art form far better than the performance does, and without it the show is opaque. Cross to Mattancherry for the spice godowns, where the smell of ginger and pepper in the streets is not a tourist experience, it is a working trade. October to March is dry and pleasant. April and May are humid and heavy. The monsoon is dramatic and the town keeps functioning through it.