Baby Beach

Sea-facing laterite fort built by the Portuguese in 1505, later held by the Dutch, the Arakkal royal house and the British — Kannur city’s great coastal landmark overlooking Mappila Bay.

The Arakkal Kettu (palace museum) of the Arakkal Ali Rajas — Kerala’s only Muslim royal house, matrilineal so ruled at times by a Beevi (queen).

Kannur city’s main beach, with a landscaped garden, the mother-and-child sculpture and long sunset walkways.

Adikadalayi Beach, also called Kadalayi Beach in Kerala’s coastal tourism study, is a Kannur shore with sandy pockets, exposed red coastal rock and palms above the water. It belongs to the Adikadalayi locality, not the separately named Thottada, Kizhunna or Ezhara beaches farther along the coast. Use the mapped public steps from Tippu Sulthan Beach Road as the arrival reference. Nearby cliff-side homestays have their own entrances and facilities, and should not be used as assumed public access.

A quiet, unspoilt cove-and-stream beach south of Kannur city, known for its homestays and calm, uncrowded sands.

Kizhunna’s sandy shore lies between Thottada and Ezhara, with palm-backed village edges and the Cherakallu rock formations breaking up the coastline.

A Bhagavathy temple near Valapattanam regarded as the mother shrine of Kalaripayattu — Kerala’s martial art — where Theyyam is performed; the goddess is guardian of the kalari.

A ~4 km hard-sand beach, the longest drive-in beach in India — you can drive along the sand at low tide; Dharmadam Island lies just offshore.

A small green private island off Muzhappilangad, reachable on foot across the sand at low tide (viewing only; landing is restricted).

On the Valapattanam river, the temple of Muthappan — where the Muthappan Theyyam is performed morning and evening on nearly every day of the year, and where entry is open to all castes and religions; a snake park is nearby. The exception is the six weeks from the first of Thulam to the fifteenth of Vrischikam, when it stops, and the ritual year begins again with Puthari Thiruvappana around the first of December.

The ritual season of north Malabar, in which a man of the Vannan or Malayan community is dressed, painted and crowned until the shrine treats him as the deity itself. It runs from the tenth of Thulam, about mid-October, to the middle of Edavam at the end of May, at kavus and household shrines rather than on any stage, and the peak is January to April. Outside the season the kavus are quiet — the exception is Parassinikkadavu, north of the city, which performs Muthappan on a fixed daily schedule and is the anchor this page is pinned to.

At Illikkunnu near Thalassery, the hillside home of the German missionary-scholar Hermann Gundert, who compiled the first Malayalam–English dictionary and grammar here in the mid-1800s.