Kerala's capital, the coastal city of
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM (still widely and more commonly known as
Trivandrum ), is set on seven low hills, 87km from the southern tip of India. Despite its administrative importance - demonstrated by wide roads, multistorey office blocks and gleaming white colonial buildings - it's a decidedly easy-going city, with an attractive mixture of narrow backstreets, traditional red-tiled gabled houses and acres of palm trees and parks breaking up the bustle of its modern concrete centre.
Although it has few monuments as such, Thiruvananthapuram is an ideal first stop in the state, as a window on Keralan culture. The oldest most interesting part of town is the Fort area in the south, around the Shri Padmanabhaswamy temple and Puttan Malika palace , while important showcases for painting, crafts and sculpture, the Shri Chitra Art Gallery and Napier Museum , stand together in a park in the north. In addition, schools specializing in the martial art Kalarippayat and the dance/theatre forms of Kathakali and Kutiyattam offer visitors an insight into the Keralan obsession with physical training and skill.
Most travellers choose to pass straight through Thiruvananthapuram, lured by the promise of Kovalam's palm-fringed beaches. A mere twenty-minute bus ride south, this popular resort is close enough to use as a base to see the city, although the recent upsurge in package tourism means it's far from the low-key, inexpensive travellers' hang-out it used to be
