Ponnani Juma Masjid

Historic coastal town known for mosque traditions and Bharathapuzha estuary.

The mouth of the Bharathapuzha (Nila), Kerala’s second-longest river — which reaches the sea here together with the Tirur Puzha, between Ponnani on the south bank and Padinjarekkara on the north.

The sea-facing beach on the Padinjarekkara sandspit, with a casuarina belt behind the sand and a government park at the end of Tipu Sultan Road.

A calm coconut-fringed backwater and park near Ponnani, with boating and kayaking — a quieter, lesser-known alternative to the Alappuzha backwaters.

A west-facing Shiva temple south of Tirur, nine shrines inside six acres, built around the moment Shiva came out of the linga to stop Death taking the boy Markandeya.

The Alathiyur Perumthrikkovil near Tirur, where the sanctum holds Sri Rama alone and the Hanuman carved outside it — leaning, caught in the act of listening to his orders — is the figure the crowds come for.

The state university at Vakkad, four kilometres west of Thunchan Parambu, founded in 2012 to teach the humanities and social sciences through Malayalam rather than English.

An ancient Vishnu temple on the Bharathapuzha at Thirunavaya, near the historic Mamankam fair-ground and a major venue for ancestral (bali/shraddha) rites.

One of the hundred and eight Shiva temples of Kerala, a kilometre from Thunchan Parambu — an apsidal ninth-century shrine that opens at half past two in the morning because the god here was installed at dusk.

At Tirur, the ground of Thunchath Ezhuthachan, the “father of the Malayalam language” — a working literary institution with a museum, a manuscript library and the Vidyarambham first-letters tradition at Vijayadashami.

Tirur's town hall, built as a full-size railway goods wagon in signal red and lettered MSM LV 1711 — the memorial to the hundred prisoners shut into wagon 1711 at the station down the road on 19 November 1921.

A revered Devi temple near Vettichira with no idol — the goddess is worshipped in a natural rock fissure; devotees offer the poomoodal and muri-pooja. Founded by legend of Adi Shankara.