Tamil Nadu doesn't get the attention from motorcycle travellers that the Himalayas or Rajasthan get, and that's a situation that Motorbike Tour India has been quietly benefiting from for years. The riders who know - who've done the Nilgiri mountain roads, who've ridden the coastal highway from Chennai to Kanyakumari, who've navigated the extraordinary temple towns of the Kaveri delta - tend not to shout about it too loudly. There's a certain satisfaction in having a world-class motorcycle destination largely to yourself.

A motorcycle tour to Tamil Nadu is not the same kind of experience as a Himalayan epic or a Rajasthan desert crossing. It doesn't ask the same things of you physically. But it offers something that those more celebrated destinations can't quite match - the combination of extraordinary road quality, deeply layered cultural richness, exceptional food at every stop, and landscapes that change so dramatically within a single day's riding that you find yourself checking your map to confirm you haven't somehow crossed a border.

The Nilgiri Hills - The Heart of Any Tamil Nadu Motorcycle Tour

If you're planning a motorcycle tour to Tamil Nadu and you're only going to ride one road, ride the Nilgiri hills. The Blue Mountains, as they're also known, rise sharply from the plains of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and the roads that climb through them are among the finest in all of India. Kotagiri, Coonoor, Ooty, Kodaikanal - these hill stations are connected by roads that would not be out of place in the Swiss Alps, except that the vegetation is richer, the food is better, and the traffic is characteristically Indian.

The road from Mettupalayam to Ooty climbs nearly 2,200 metres in approximately 40 kilometres of riding - a sequence of hairpin bends, steep gradients, and views that keep opening up in new directions as you gain height. The eucalyptus forests give way to tea estates, the air cools noticeably as you climb, and by the time you reach the Nilgiri plateau the light has changed completely. Morning mist hangs in the valleys below you and the road ahead is quiet and clear.

The Kolli Hills and Yercaud - Tamil Nadu's Hidden Motorcycle Roads

Most motorcycle tourists who visit Tamil Nadu stick to the famous Nilgiris, which means they miss Kolli Hills entirely. This is their loss and your gain. Kolli Hills is accessed via 70 consecutive hairpin bends - a road engineering achievement that is also one of the most viscerally satisfying riding experiences in south India. The road is narrow and demanding, the views are spectacular, and because relatively few tourists make the effort, the atmosphere at the top is relaxed and local in a way that Ooty hasn't been for decades.

Yercaud in the Shevaroy Hills is another underrated destination on a Tamil Nadu motorcycle tour - a coffee and orange plantation hill station that sees a fraction of the visitors that the Nilgiris attract, but offers riding roads through dense orchards and forests that are genuinely memorable.

The Temple Circuit - Culture on a Motorcycle Tour to Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu has the greatest concentration of Dravidian temples anywhere in the world, and some of them - Madurai's Meenakshi Amman, the Brihadeeswara in Thanjavur, the Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram - are among the most significant architectural achievements in human history. Building a motorcycle tour to Tamil Nadu that includes the major temple sites gives your riding an additional layer of meaning that goes beyond road quality and scenery.

The riding between these temple towns across the Kaveri delta is flat and warm - very different in character from the ghat roads - but it has its own appeal. The landscape is fertile and intensively farmed, the towns are busy and fragrant with jasmine and incense, and the people are extraordinarily welcoming to motorcycle travellers in a way that makes you want to stop and talk to everyone.

Riding Tamil Nadu with Motorbike Tour India

Motorbike Tour India's Tamil Nadu routes typically run over eight to twelve days and combine the hill roads with the coastal highway and the temple circuit into a journey that shows the full range of what this state offers. Our guides for the Tamil Nadu routes are southerners who know this landscape the way our northern guides know the Himalayas - from the inside out, with a depth of local knowledge that turns a good motorcycle tour to Tamil Nadu into an extraordinary one.

If south India has been on your list and you haven't pulled the trigger yet, let this be the push. Tamil Nadu on a motorcycle is one of the great undiscovered pleasures of motorcycle travel in India. Motorbike Tour India will show you exactly why.