Kerala

Medicine carried by hand

Kerala's Ayurveda is not a spa treatment. It is a whole medical tradition, carried through families of physicians who trained the old way, by living in a teacher's house and learning at his side. The knowledge sits in the pulse read under three fingers, in the assessment of a constitution, in gardens of medicinal plants.

The state wears its greenery and its monsoon as part of the medicine. Treatment follows the season, the rain, and the patient, never a fixed schedule.

The places worth the journey

Kottakkal is the old seat of the tradition and its teaching. The backwaters spread south and west, slow water moving under the coconut. Fort Kochi keeps its harbour history and the long memory of the spice trade. Wayanad climbs into the Western Ghats, cool and forested and quiet.