God's Own Country - Kerala, India

Kerala (Malayalam: കേരളം; Kēraḷaṁ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of southwestern India. To its east and northeast, Kerala borders Tamil Nadu and Karnataka respectively; to its west and south lie the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean with the islands of Lakshadweep and the Maldives, respectively. Kerala envelops Mahé, a coastal exclave of Pondicherry. Kerala is one of the four states of South India.

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The Chera kings' dependence on trade meant that merchants from West Asia established coastal posts and settlements in Kerala. Many — especially Jews and Christians — also escaped persecution, establishing the Nasrani Mappila and Muslim Mappila communities. According to several scholars, the Jews first arrived in Kerala in 573 BC. The works of scholars and Eastern Christian writings state that Thomas the Apostle visited Muziris in Kerala in 52 CE to proselytize amongst Kerala's Jewish settlements. However, the first verifiable migration of Jewish-Nasrani families to Kerala is of the arrival of Knai Thoma in 345 CE. Muslim merchants settled in Kerala by the 8th century CE. After Vasco Da Gama's arrival in 1498, the Portuguese sought to control the lucrative pepper trade by subduing Keralite communities and commerce.

Kerala's 38,863 km² landmass (1.18% of India) is wedged between the Arabian Sea to the west and the Western Ghats — identified as one of the world's twenty-five biodiversity hotspots — to the east. Lying between north latitudes 8°18' and 12°48' and east longitudes 74°52' and 72°22', Kerala is well within the humid equatorial tropics. Kerala's coast runs for some 580 km (360 miles), while the state itself varies between 35 and 120 km (22--75 miles) in width. Geographically, Kerala can be divided into three climatically distinct regions: the eastern highlands (rugged and cool mountainous terrain), the central midlands (rolling hills), and the western lowlands (coastal plains). Located at the extreme southern tip of the Indian subcontinent, Kerala lies near the centre of the Indian tectonic plate; as such, most of the state is subject to comparatively little seismic and volcanic activity. Geologically, pre-Cambrian and Pleistocene formations compose the bulk of Kerala's terrain.