Niraamaya Retreats Surya Samudra

Surya Samudra began in 1982 as a rescue. Klaus Schleusener, a professor at IIT Madras, and Karl Damschen, a Swiss architect, set up the Octagon House to preserve Kerala's architectural heritage, and the hotel that grew out of it, on a cliff at Pulinkudi a few kilometres south of Kovalam, has kept up the work: tharavads, the region's traditional wooden houses, brought in from around Kerala and restored under the coconut palms, with wooden pillars and terracotta roofs. The cottages have showers open to the sky, and the Heritage Premium ones a bath out in the garden, so a good deal of the washing here is done outdoors. There is an Octagon to sleep in too: a stone house of 900 square feet with a sun deck of its own over the Arabian Sea.

Recommended for couples who have come for Ayurveda and quiet, and for families whose children can be trusted near a cliff edge. The Banyan Tree Bungalow stands on its own, 1,100 square feet for two with a sit-out and an open-air shower, and is meant for honeymoons; the Family Villa, in a quieter part of the grounds, has three bedrooms, a library and a plunge pool, and sleeps up to six. Kovalam's crowds are 10 to 15 minutes away by road. Between yoga and the spa's eight treatment rooms, the hotel takes guests out to the fish market at Vizhinjam and by boat on the backwaters at Poovar, and steep steps lead down to two secluded beaches. The pool, cut from the granite of the cliff, faces west, with Madira, the bar, beside it and Essence, for Thai seafood, on the cliff edge above, so the evening is arranged around the sunset before anyone has ordered a drink.