Marari Beach Resort

The resort's neighbours are up before it is. Every morning the fishermen of Mararikulam bring in their catch to be auctioned, and anyone staying can walk over to watch. The cottages take after the fishermen's own houses, with coconut-leaf thatch and bathrooms open to the sky, and they are spread through thirty acres of coconut grove and lily pond behind a beach that is still the village's: the nets come in on it. The oldest building on the grounds, the Club House, is more than two hundred years old, with Portuguese-style interiors, and has retired to become the bar. Chakara, the main restaurant, cooks the dishes of the Kerala and Konkan fishing communities, chemeen manga curry, prawns with raw mango, among them, and grows its vegetables in a four-acre organic garden.

Recommended for anyone after a Kerala beach that still has its fishermen on it, and for families with young children: under-fives stay free, and in place of a kids' club there are fish to feed and a butterfly garden. The gardens earn their acreage. At the Farm Kitchen guests pick their own produce and cook it with the chefs, and a separate medicinal garden grows the herbs for the Ayurveda centre's oils, so the treatments are as home-grown as the vegetables. Alappuzha's backwater canals are 11 km away, and the hotel arranges a houseboat cruise. The Beach Shack, the sunset spot on the sand, shuts for the monsoon, which is when the fishermen hope for chakara: a calm mudbank the rains drive up offshore, where the fish crowd in. The restaurant is named after their luck.