How many people can you get on a motorbike? How many letters in a word? How many dishes in a meal? The answer, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, seems always to be a lot more than you’d think.

Extreme feats of motorbike usage are not rare in Asia, but a family of six on one bike was a record sighting for me, and we spotted them outside a temple that notched up a new high in word length: 21-letter Gangaikondacholapuram.

Looking out for a relatively untrodden Indian destination, my friend Kalpana and I had decided to check out the eastern side of the subcontinent. Taking up most of its southern tip, Tamil Nadu is more than three times the size of popular Kerala. Yet ask Brits where they’ve been in India and if it’s not Goa or Kerala, they’ll say Rajasthan, Delhi, the Himalayas. Tamil Nadu is barely on the radar – a fact that was underlined when friendly, inquisitive people queued to take photos of Kalpana with this blonde woman at the state’s major sights.

And those sights are many and wonderful: golden beaches along the 435-mile Coromandel coast, temples to rival – and older than – Angkor Wat (Tamil Nadu has eight of the world’s 10 biggest Hindu temples), tea plantations and craggy mountains.

Leaving grey, wet London (on a trip with UK firm Experience Travel, which started offering India itineraries last year) and landing to blue sky and 30C in Chennai felt as exciting as Christmas, which it was, sort of: we’d arrived in time for Pongal, the four-day Tamil harvest festival (it’s on 14-17 January 2017).

Tamil Nadu is home to one of the last surviving classical civilisations, with 3,800 years of continuous cultural history

The name comes from the word for “boil” or “spill over”, and it seemed the whole state was brimming with party spirit. Young and old paraded in new clothes, many carried sheaves of auspicious sugar cane for decorating their homes, and in front of almost every house a rangoli pattern of coloured powder and rice flour offered a festive welcome.

Brits may not come here in great numbers, but the growth in leisure travel among India’s middle class has seen new hotels in popular spots, stylish but with an Indian feel and clientele, and (to westerners) fantastic value. North of Pondicherry, shabby-chic Dune Eco Resort (cottage for two with garden £65 B&B) was full of families enjoying a Pongal break on this organic farm with pool, restaurant, cows to milk, bikes to hire and direct access to an unspoiled beach. As we wandered along that beach watching the fishing boats, Gomedi, a jolly off-duty policewoman, insisted on selfies with me and her assorted nieces and nephews.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The shore temple at Mahabalipuram. Photograph: Alamy

On the way to “Pondy”, we’d taken in the 1,300-year-old shore temple and rock reliefs at Mahabalipuram, and next day, heading inland with our driver, Senthil, we hit Chidambaram and its classic south Indian temple – tower gateways in bright colours teeming with dancing gods. But I didn’t grasp what a big hitter this state is, architecturally, until Gangaikondacholapuram.

Tamil Nadu is home to one of the world’s last surviving classical civilisations, with 3,800 years of continuous cultural history. One of its dynasties – the Chola, which ruled for 1,500 years until the 13th century – were big builders as well as patrons of the arts, and Gangaikondacholapuram, now a small village, was their capital. A honey-coloured statue of the smiling bull, Nandi, the mount of the god Shiva, is positioned to reflect sunlight into the temple’s interior, while outside intricately carved deities look out over well-kept gardens.

It was busy – not with tourists but with people using the site as they always have, for prayer and celebration. Picnicking groups were making a day of it, the girls with a profusion of flowers in their hair. We queued with chattering crowds for the Shiva shrine, and watched as they took pinches of ash from the priest’s offering and drew good luck swastikas on the walls of the inner sanctum. (A notice told how the temple had stood undamaged since 1035AD – except for the 19th-century depredations of British engineers taking stone to build dams.)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bungalows at Mantra. Photograph: Liz Boulter/The Guardian

The third day of Pongal celebrates the cow, and at our next hotel, the rural Mantra, resident cattle were looking festive, with garlands and painted horns. A former coconut farm, the Mantra also has ducks, geese and goats wandering between its pool, excellent veggie restaurant and guest bungalows (£47 a night B&B). It’s also just a few miles from Kumbakonam, showing a lack of ambition with only 10 letters, but with such a reputation for Hindu learning that it is called the Cambridge of south India. It could also be the Siem Reap of south India, for its wealth of temples: 188 in town, and hundreds more nearby.

Keeping the letter count up were nearby Unesco-listed Airavathesvara temple, with 100 intricately carved pillars, and Adhikumbeswaraswany, dating from the seventh century and of a size to match its 19-letter name.

Kumbakonam was crowded – with groups of shirtless, ash-anointed pilgrims rather than clueless, suncream-anointed tourists – but we got to the next stop on our temple crawl, Thanjavur, on post-Pongal Monday and had almost to ourselves another glory of Indian architecture. Brihadisvara (or just “Big”) temple was built in 1010, with an 80-tonne carved rock atop a 60-metre tower, and the colours are still bright on its 1,000-year-old frescos. (And while admission tickets in Siem Reap start at $20, Tamil Nadu’s temples, not being tourist attractions but part of everyday life, are free. We made offerings where appropriate, but were never asked for a rupee.)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Thanjavur temple. Photograph: narayankumar/Getty Images

But however fine the carvings and uplifting the vistas, mankind can only bear so many temples. Leaving behind the rice paddies and wide slow rivers of lowland Tamil Nadu, we drove 180 miles to Jayanthi and Prabhu’s (Tamils don’t traditionally use surnames) farmstay, Banyan Tree (full-board doubles from about £75) in the foothills of the Western Ghats. Last year they added four en suite rooms in a new building (taking the total to six) and are popular with trekkers, cyclists and birdwatchers, but also with certain uninvited visitors. Driving around the farm in his 1961 Jeep Prabhu showed us mango and coconut plantations ravaged by wild elephants from the nearby Parambikulam reserve.

Meals (including picnics for trek days) were home-cooked and mostly home-grown. And though Pongal was over, the tradition of abundance wasn’t. Banana-leaf thalis for dinner comprised no fewer than 10 mouth-tingling curries, plus rice and papad. Breakfast was uttapam (rice and lentil flour pancakes), with tomato gravy, coconut chutney and idli podi, a nutty-tasting relish of ground lentils, spices and oil.

Trekking in nearby Top Slip wildlife sanctuary, we looked out for tigers (but saw just prints and poo, plus rare Nilgiri langur monkeys and bison-like gaur.) We kept our eyes peeled for wild elephants, too, but in vain. The next night, however, we found ourselves fervently hoping the wildlife would stay well away.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Liz Boulter and Kalpana on a jeep drive. Photograph: Liz Boulter/The Guardian

The town of Valparai sits at just over 1,000 metres amid 10,000 acres of tea. One of the plantation owners is Briar Estates, British-founded but now Indian-owned. With tea consumption dropping worldwide, it has diversified into tea tourism, offering luxury rooms in three period bungalows and more affordable stays aimed at peace-hungry Indian city-dwellers. Safari tents and chalets in bungalow grounds cost from £25 B&B for two, and our billet, Puthuthottam Annex, former staff quarters with two simple doubles, is £40 a night B&B. Meals were served a short walk up the hill at the magnificently shabby Woodhouse Mansion, built for the Marsh family in 1865. Paint flaked from its window frames and creaky furniture had bits missing: it felt as if nothing had changed since the family left for Blighty in the 1930s.

After dinner, resident conservationist Sachen walked Kalpana and me back to the annex. Once we were in, he reattached the thick wires to complete the electric fencing round our home for the night. “It’s mainly to keep elephants out,” he said as the power went on. “If a leopard came, it could leap that fence.” We hurriedly rethought plans to sit out on the veranda under the stars.

The wildlife did mostly stay away: loud crashes jolted us awake once or twice but, collecting us for a dawn trek next day, Sachen said it was probably just giant squirrels or the resident lion-tailed macaques playing on the roof. With mist rising over the silver oaks that shade the tea, we headed uphill, spotting birds from the tiny Tickell’s flower pecker to bold black racket-tailed drongos.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Valparai tea plantation. Photograph: Liz Boulter/The Guardian

And that’s when it happened. Walking ahead of the others, I sensed movement in the tea bushes, turned – and froze. Barely 10 metres from the path, head low, crouched a vision in gold and black, a leopard. Unsure whether to be exultant or terrified, I held her pale grey gaze for what was probably just seconds, as goose pimples spread across my body. Then the spell broke, and by the time I’d signalled to Sachen, she was gone.

We spotted a wild elephant from the car next day, in jungle near the Kerala border, but it’s that moment communing with the leopard that stays with me. As well as offering a lot more than you’d think, Tamil Nadu had given me more than I’d dared dream.

Way to go

The trip was provided by Experience Travel Group (020-3627 6148, experiencetravelgroup.com), whose nine-night trip with two nights each at Dune Eco Resort, Mantra, Banyan Tree and Puthuthottam Annexe, and one night in Kochin, costs from £1,593pp, including car, driver and return flights from Heathrow with Etihad Airways