A Day Trip From Kochi: Six Options Ranked by Travel Time

The best day trip from Kochi is the one you can get back from. Six places get suggested to every visitor, and they are not equally suited to a single day. Ranked from nearest to furthest, they are Cherai, Kodungallur, Thrissur, Alappuzha, Athirappilly and Munnar.

The quick answer: Cherai, Kodungallur and Athirappilly are comfortable single days. Thrissur and Alappuzha work but leave you rushed. Munnar as a day trip is a bad idea and you should give it a night.

1. Cherai

The closest of the six. Cherai is a beach on Vypin island, reachable by road over the bridges or by ferry and road, and it is the shortest drive on this list by a clear margin.

It gives you a long, calm sand beach with a backwater channel running behind it, which means you can see beach and backwater in the same afternoon without booking anything. Food is basic beach shack and small restaurant fare.

Best for a half day rather than a full one. Go in the afternoon, stay for sunset, be back in Kochi for dinner. Swim only where it is supervised, and be careful in the monsoon months when the sea here is rough.

2. Kodungallur

North of Kochi, and one of the more historically dense places in the state. Kodungallur is associated with the earliest arrivals of Christianity, Islam and Jewish settlement in India, and the town carries a temple, a very old mosque and church sites within a small radius.

It is an easy morning's drive and a comfortable day out, particularly if you combine it with the coast on the way back. The Bharani festival at the Bhagavathy temple here is a major and distinctive event with its own conventions, and it is worth understanding what it involves before deciding to attend.

3. Thrissur

A little further north again, and doable in a day. You get a walkable town centre, the Vadakkunnathan temple on its hill, the zoo and museum campus and the gold shopping street.

The problem is that Thrissur is better as an overnight, particularly if anything is on. As a day trip you will see the Round, one attraction and eat well, and then have to leave.

4. Alappuzha

South of Kochi on a road that is built up for much of the way, which makes the drive longer than the distance implies. Traffic decides your day here more than anything else.

A day trip gets you a canal cruise of a few hours and lunch. It does not get you the early morning on the water, which is the best part of the backwaters. If backwaters are the point of your trip, give Alappuzha a night rather than a day.

5. Athirappilly

East, towards the hills, past Chalakudy. The waterfalls are the largest in the state and the road out there runs through forest, which makes the journey part of the trip.

This is the best pure day trip of the six. You can leave after breakfast, spend the middle of the day at the falls and the smaller Vazhachal falls nearby, and be back in the evening.

Two warnings. The falls are at their most dramatic in and just after the monsoon, and that is also when access to the lower viewpoints gets restricted for safety. And people are killed at Indian waterfalls every year by ignoring barriers. Stay behind them. The rain rewards other parts of the state as well, which is the case for Trivandrum in the monsoon.

6. Munnar

The furthest by a long way, and the one to think hard about. The drive climbs into the hills on a winding road, and the time on the road in each direction takes up most of a day.

You can technically do it. You will spend the majority of your waking hours in a vehicle, arrive when the light is flat, see one viewpoint and a tea estate, and drive back tired on a mountain road after dark. Munnar in the early morning, with mist on the tea, is the reason to go, and a day trip cannot give you that.

Give it two nights if you can, one if you must. The same logic applies to anything further out again, including Kannur in Theyyam season.

Practical notes

• Travel times on all six vary a great deal with traffic, weather and the day of the week. Check on the morning rather than trusting a planning estimate.
• Hire a car with a driver rather than self driving unless you are used to Kerala roads.
• Public buses reach all six, cheaply and slowly.
• Trains are a good option for Thrissur and Alappuzha and no use for the other four.

Before you pick

Any of these six can turn into a much better day if something is on when you arrive: a pooram at a village temple, a boat race, a church feast. In Biennale years the pull runs the other way, and the question becomes which Biennale venues to prioritise instead of where to drive. Most of it is announced locally and never reaches a visitor.

EventifyPlus, our hyperlocal event discovery product for Kerala, is live now and exists for that reason. It covers temple festivals, boat races and the rest of the local calendar, and it gives organisers a way to reach people beyond word of mouth.