Rainforest Athirapally

Ten rooms on seven acres of rainforest, and every one of them faces Athirappilly Falls. Rainforest Athirapally sits inside the Sholayar forest directly above the water, and the treehouse takes the setting furthest: a Swiss architect engineered it around a living tree, with room to let the trunk keep growing. Stand at its rail and you look across the canopy to the thundering water. The hotel is candid about the trade-offs, too: room service does not climb that far, and small children are better suited to the rooms below.

The rooms below the canopy

Six Luxury rooms put the falls on the balcony, best enjoyed, the hotel suggests, with a piping hot coffee while the mist drifts up. The Premium adds an in-room jacuzzi and a bathroom that looks straight out at the water. The Celestial suite, with its walk-in wardrobe and foot massager, is the one the resort says celebrities book for quiet visits. The pool faces the falls as well, which is no accident.

"No person at any corner of our space should be untouched by the luxury of the falls."

That is the design brief the owners set themselves, and it holds from the bedrooms to the library, games room and projector space they call Pachyderm.

Sadhya, Ayurveda and the Kadar kitchen

Lunch is a Kerala sadhya on a banana leaf; dinner is a four-course menu that changes with the day of the week. There is no alcohol permit, so plan accordingly. Ayurveda comes through the Madukkakuzhy family, practitioners for eight generations, with residential programmes running two to three weeks. The experience worth booking early is the Kadar tribal cooking, tapioca and fish charred in bamboo, which needs five days' notice. Beyond the gate: Charpa Falls 2 km away, Vazhachal a further 3 km, fireflies before the rains, and hornbills overhead. Wi-Fi reaches every room except the treehouse and cottage. We would call that a feature, not a fault.