Ask most travellers to call an Indian beach holiday, and also you’ll most likely get one reply: Goa. For abroad guests, it has change into shorthand for an Indian coastal escape, with its palm-fringed seashores, shacks serving recent seafood, Portuguese-era church buildings and wild events that stick with it after darkish. However I dwell in India, and I do know that this acquainted image represents only a fraction of what the nation’s shoreline has to supply.
Stretching for almost 7,000 miles alongside the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, it encompasses seashores and coastal landscapes that adjust dramatically from one area to the subsequent – and it’s about time a few of them received a point out too.
Listed here are some options to Goa in your Indian seaside break, whether or not you’re after browsing, diving or wildlife-spotting.
Learn extra: These islands are the closest to paradise I’ve found
The surf coast
Mulki, Karnataka
India’s surfing scene is younger – it solely took root within the early 2000s – and started on the west coast in Karnataka, the place the tiny fishing village of Mulki turned the nation’s inconceivable surf capital. An American surfer, Jack Hebner opened India’s first surf faculty right here in 2004 on a stretch of coast no person had thought to journey earlier than. The waves themselves are a brief boat journey downriver at Sasihithlu, the place the Shambhavi meets the Arabian Sea in mild swells.
How one can do it: Locals name Hebner the “browsing swami,” and his faculty, Mantra Surf Club, sits on the calm facet of the Shambhavi River. It runs three to 30-day programs with ISA-certified instructors, gear and yoga thrown in, alongside riverside rooms – shared air-conditioned dorms from round £14 an evening per particular person; premium cottages from £45.
Puducherry
Puducherry, additional south once more, has a number of the nation’s extra forgiving waves at Serenity Seaside, properly suited to novices and improvers alike. Two piers constructed as tsunami defences after 2004 helped form the break and because the city by no means fairly caught on as a browsing vacation spot, you journey it with out the crowds.
How one can do it: Kallialay, one of many east coast’s authentic surf colleges, based in 2009 by two Spanish brothers, nonetheless runs ISA-certified group and personal classes right here, with all of the tools included. For the evening, Le Dupleix, an 18th-century French colonial heritage lodge in White City, does doubles from round £69.
Kovalam, Tamil Nadu
Alongside India’s east coast, Tamil Nadu has carved out its personal nook of the nation’s surf scene. An hour south of Chennai, Kovalam – identified domestically as Covelong – mixes mellow cove waves for novices with firmer level breaks for extra assured surfers, greatest between August and March. Round 12 miles on, the historic coastal city of Mamallapuram brings browsing proper up in opposition to one in all India’s most recognisable monuments: right-handers peel previous the eighth-century Shore Temple, constructed by the Pallava rulers who made the city a significant centre of artwork and structure.
How one can do it: Surf Turf has taught Kovalam since 2012, with a surf store, ocean-facing rooms and a bar that appears straight over the break. Doubles from round £49. The identical outfit additionally runs kayaking and stand-up paddleboarding.
Beneath the waves
The Andaman Islands
In contrast with Thailand, Indonesia or the Philippines, India’s diving scene remains to be nascent. Most of it performs out throughout two archipelagos. The Andamans, fringed with immaculate seashores and threaded with mangrove creeks, are the extra accessible of the 2, whereas Lakshadweep sits additional out and tougher to achieve.
Andaman diving is predicated primarily on Swaraj Dweep (previously Havelock Island), house to greater than 25 dive websites. Minerva Ledge stays probably the most fashionable: flat coral gardens giving approach to deeper water thick with tuna and barracuda, the present robust sufficient for a correct drift dive. For a harder dive, Dixon’s Pinnacle drops from 18 to 35 metres throughout three coral-draped ridges, patrolled by large groupers and reef sharks, with the occasional manta or whale shark passing by means of.
A direct ferry covers the quick hop to quieter Neil Island, renamed Shaheed Dweep, the place Fish Slate is the one price realizing. It’s a shallow reef of simply 4 metres, the place dugongs (a kind of sea cow) graze the seagrass between February and Could.
How one can do it: DIVEIndia has been educating individuals to dive right here because the early 2000s – an SSI-affiliated Diamond-rated Teacher Coaching Centre, and one of many oldest outfits within the islands, working all the pieces from a primary try-dive to full certification.
Learn extra: Why the ‘Hawaii of Japan’ should be your next beach holiday
Lakshadweep
For divers keen to make the additional journey, Lakshadweep rewards the hassle: a scatter of coral atolls off Kerala, with visibility stretching to 50 metres and turtles turning up on virtually each outing. Diving is predicated round Kavaratti, Kadmat and Agatti islands. The most effective-known website, Wall of Surprise on Kavaratti’s north-west facet, is a cave dive alongside a sheer reef face dropping to 20-30 metres, greatest explored after darkish, when the water sparks with bioluminescence at each kick of a fin.
How one can do it: Keep at Sea Shells, with a personal seaside on each Kavaratti (seaview cottages from round £70) and Agatti (ocean-view cottages from round £93, breakfast included). All guests want a allow, utilized for on-line through the ePermit portal.
Wildlife-spotting
Odisha
In Odisha, on India’s jap coast, the seaside itself turns into the attraction: a whole lot of hundreds of feminine olive ridley turtles come ashore collectively over only a handful of nights every year, sometimes between late January and March, in a mass occasion referred to as an arribada, or “arrival”.
Gahirmatha, close to the mouth of the Brahmani-Baitarani river within the state’s north, was the primary such rookery to be recorded, in 1974, and was formally protected as a marine sanctuary in 1997, however entry to the core nesting seaside is now closely restricted.
Rushikulya, additional south close to Chilika Lake, is the higher wager – probably the most accessible locations in India to see it, although numbers swing wildly: almost 900,000 turtles nested there throughout two phases in 2025, in comparison with simply 205,000 over 4 days in 2026.
How one can do it: Mattress down at Swosti Chilika Resort, on Asia’s largest brackish-water lagoon, lower than an hour from Rushikulya; it arranges journeys to see the nesting, and rooms price from round £44 an evening.
Learn extra: I’ve been to the Maldives eight times – this is the best way to do it
The Andamans
After darkish, India’s coast places on a special form of present: bioluminescence, the glow produced when disturbed marine plankton emit mild by means of a chemical response. Within the Andamans, Havelock Island’s mangrove channels, thick with these organisms, flare electrical blue with each paddle stroke – one of many nation’s most putting pure mild reveals.
Kayak excursions run by means of operators on the island, although guidelines on evening paddling within the mangroves are tightening, so test present timings; some journeys now run earlier than dawn as a substitute. Goal for a moonless evening, since even faint moonlight washes out the glow.
How one can do it: Relaxation up at Barefoot at Havelock, the island’s authentic eco-resort off Radhanagar Seaside, its cottages constructed from mud, wooden and thatch. From round £124 an evening for 2, breakfast included.
Mattu Seaside, Karnataka
Mattu Seaside, close to Udupi in Karnataka, affords a quieter model of the identical present: nutrient-rich coastal waters right here help their very own bloom of bioluminescent plankton, lighting up the surf each time waves break on the shore. It’s most dependable on darkish, moonless nights within the weeks following the monsoon.
How one can do it: Keep on the Samanvay Boutique Hotel, a brief drive inland, from round £37 an evening.