The Western Ghats Come Alive

Welcome to Issue 75 of Travel Viewpoint, our July 2025 issue: The Western Ghats Come Alive.

Most travel advice tells you to avoid the monsoon. This issue does the opposite. In July the Western Ghats, the long chain of hills that runs down India’s west coast from Gujarat and Maharashtra through Goa, Karnataka and Kerala to Tamil Nadu, are at their most alive. Streams that were dry in May become waterfalls. Moss covers every wall. Frogs call all night, and the forest smells of wet earth and leaf litter. The Ghats are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the world’s great biodiversity hotspots, and the rain is the reason why.

The monsoon also asks more of a traveller. Roads slip, trails close, leeches wait on the path and the clouds can sit on a hill for days. So this issue is about travelling the Ghats slowly and sensibly: on foot more than by car, staying put more than rushing, and listening to the people who live with this rain every year.

Walking, driving and falling water

We begin with an argument: why July is a walking month, not a driving fantasy. Then we make one exception for one ghat road that is worth the rain, the hairpin climb to Agumbe in Karnataka, among the wettest places in India. Our waterfall feature rounds up waterfalls you can reach without a convoy, the kind you can see from a viewpoint or a short walk rather than a jeep queue.

Staying and eating

A plantation stay that is not a resort brochure takes you to a working coffee estate in the rain. Food in a Malnad kitchen sits by the hearth in Karnataka’s hill country, where the monsoon changes what gets cooked. And a photograph from the veranda closes the issue with one long afternoon of rain.

Treks, safety and paperwork

For first-timers, a first trek that stays under the cloud walks to Rajmachi in the Sahyadris. Leeches, landslides and the honest packing list covers what to carry and when to turn back, and permit and homestay notes explains the bookings, closures and checks worth doing before you set out.