Ten days in Tamil Nadu: the India the Mughals never got to

Three nights in Chennai, two at Mamallapuram, two in Pondicherry and two in Madurai. Short drives down the coast, then one long train inland.

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Length
10 days, 9 nights
Where you stay
Chennai, Mamallapuram, Pondicherry, Madurai
Places
22 across 10 days
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Northern India is Mughal. Tamil Nadu is not, and that single fact changes what the buildings look like. Instead of domes and marble inlay there are gopurams: gate towers eight or ten storeys high, crusted from base to tip with painted figures, standing over temples that were old before Delhi had a sultan.

The other difference is that the temples are not monuments. They are working, crowded, noisy places with elephants, marriage parties, flower sellers and queues, in the middle of towns that grew up around them. Coming here after Rajasthan is like arriving in a different country, and in most senses that matter it is one.

This route runs down the coast and then turns inland, which is both the easy way and the interesting one. It ends at the temple that everything else in the state is measured against.

Highlights

  • The Shore Temple, standing on the sand since around 700 AD and still being eaten by the sea
  • A bas-relief the size of a house wall, carved out of one rock in the seventh century
  • A grid of French street names, mustard-yellow walls and a seafront closed to cars
  • Chola bronzes in Chennai, and more of them in a museum in Pondicherry
  • The Meenakshi temple at Madurai, and the ceremony that closes it every night

Where to stay

Chennai, three nights

Chennai is where the British began, at a fort on a beach in 1639, and where Tamil cinema, Carnatic music and the state's politics still happen. It is flat, hot, enormous and much harder to like on sight than the towns further down the coast, which is why three nights rather than five.

It rewards specificity. Mylapore, an old temple quarter now surrounded by the city, is the best few hours in Chennai. So are the bronzes in the Government Museum and the beach at six in the evening.

Mamallapuram, two nights

About 52 km from Chennai.

Mamallapuram is a small seaside town with a UNESCO site scattered through it. In the seventh and eighth centuries the Pallava kings used the granite outcrops here as a workshop, carving temples, caves and free-standing shrines directly out of the living rock, and then stopped, leaving several of them unfinished.

The result is a place where you walk from a cafe to a monument in three minutes and there is a stonemason's yard on the way, still cutting granite by hand. Two nights, and one of them should end on the beach.

Pondicherry, two nights

About 86 km from Mamallapuram.

Pondicherry was French until 1954 and has never entirely stopped being so. The old White Town east of the canal is laid out on a grid of numbered streets with French names, mustard and grey walls, bougainvillea over compound gates, and a seafront promenade that closes to traffic every evening.

On the far side of the canal is a Tamil town that was there first and is livelier. Stay in the French quarter and eat on both sides of the line.

Madurai, two nights

By train from Pondicherry, Pondicherry railway station to Madurai Junction railway station, about 291 km.

Madurai was trading with Rome when Chennai was a fishing village, and two thousand years later it is still arranged in concentric squares around one temple. Every street in the old town points at it.

It is hot, loud and enjoyable, and two nights is enough because the temple is the reason to come and you will go back to it twice anyway.

Day by day

Day 1 in Chennai

Marina Beach and the church over an apostle

Chennai's airport is about forty minutes southwest of the centre and takes flights from most of Southeast Asia and the Gulf. Whatever time you get in, aim to be on the beach by five.

The Marina is the city's front garden: a strip of sand several kilometres long with a promenade behind it, filling every evening with families, cricket games, horse rides and stalls frying things. Nobody much swims, because the undertow is genuinely dangerous, and that is not what it is for.

At the south end of it, in the old quarter of Mylapore, stands a white basilica built over what is held to be the tomb of the apostle Thomas, who is said to have come here in the first century and been killed on a hill outside the city.

  1. 17:00

    Marina Beach

    Nature

    Wide, long and often called the second longest urban beach in the world. Walk it in the last hour of daylight, buy sundal from a cart, and do not go into the water past your knees.

  2. 19:00

    Santhome Church

    Religious

    One of only three churches anywhere built over the tomb of an apostle, the others being in Rome and Santiago de Compostela. The neo-Gothic building is nineteenth century; what is underneath it is not.

  3. 20:30

    Dinner in Mylapore

    Eat

    Start with filter coffee and work backwards. The mess halls around the temple tank do dosa and pongal all evening for less than the price of the coffee anywhere else.

With more time: An early arrival leaves time for the streets of Mylapore itself, which are worth an hour on their own: flower markets, silk shops, and a temple tank with steps down to the water in the middle of it all.

Day 2 in Chennai

The fort, an Armenian church and a room full of Chola bronzes

Colonial Madras today, which is a much stranger story than the buildings suggest. The East India Company bought a strip of beach here in 1639 and put up a fort, and everything British in India grew out of that transaction.

The fort is still in use as the state government's offices, so you walk through a working compound to get to the museum and the church. Then George Town behind it, laid out for the merchants who followed, where an Armenian church of 1712 stands in a lane off the wholesale markets with three hundred and fifty graves paved into its floor and courtyard.

Finish at the Government Museum. Skip most of it and go to the bronze gallery, which holds the best collection of Chola bronzes in the world: eleventh-century figures cast by the lost wax method, and among the finest sculpture India has produced.

  1. 09:30

    Fort St. George

    Other

    The Company's first fortress in India, finished in 1644 and still the seat of the Tamil Nadu government. The museum inside has the original Company flag and a great deal of colonial portraiture.

  2. 12:30

    Armenian Church

    Religious

    Built in 1712, rebuilt in 1772, with six bells that are still rung and about 350 Armenian graves laid into the floor and courtyard. Almost nobody comes, and the caretaker will talk for an hour if you let him.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch in George Town

    Eat

    The wholesale streets behind the church are full of small canteens feeding the market. Rice, sambar, a vegetable and a curd, eaten fast, standing up if it is busy.

  4. 15:00

    Government Museum

    Culture

    Founded in 1857, and the bronze gallery is the reason to come: dancing Shivas, Parvatis and saints cast a thousand years ago. Closed Fridays. Ignore the natural history wing entirely.

With more time: The oldest British church in India stands inside the fort walls, consecrated in 1680, with tombstones from the 1650s in the yard and a Robert Clive marriage entry in the register. It is a ten minute detour from the fort museum.

Day 3 in Chennai

Mylapore, Triplicane and an evening at Elliot's Beach

Temples today, and both of them are working ones in the middle of dense old neighbourhoods rather than sites you buy a ticket for.

The first is the great Shiva temple of Mylapore, whose gopuram you can see from several streets away, painted in the sort of colours nobody uses on buildings anywhere else. Go early, when the morning puja is on and the tank at the back is quiet.

The second, in Triplicane, is older still and dedicated to Vishnu in the form of Krishna acting as Arjuna's charioteer. It is the oldest temple in Chennai and it feels it: low, dark, granite, and much less decorated than the first.

Then a short drive south for the evening. Elliot's Beach is smaller than the Marina, calmer, and the neighbourhood behind it has the best cafes in the city.

  1. 08:00

    Kapaleeshwarar Temple

    Religious

    Founded perhaps in the eighth century, rebuilt in the 1600s, with a 37 metre gopuram covered in figures. Go round the tank at the back before you go in; the morning reflection of the tower in it is the photograph.

  2. 10:30

    Parthasarathy Temple

    Religious

    The oldest temple in the city, named for Krishna as Arjuna's charioteer. Dark, granite, and much plainer than Mylapore, which is the point of seeing them on the same day.

  3. 17:00

    Edward Elliot's Beach

    Nature

    Quieter and cleaner than the Marina, with a memorial to a Dutch sailor at one end and cafes behind the sand. The place to spend the last evening in Chennai doing nothing.

With more time: Kalakshetra, in the south of the city, teaches Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music and stages performances through the season. If there is anything on while you are here, go: it is the real thing rather than the hotel version.

Day 4 in Mamallapuram

South to Mamallapuram, the Shore Temple and a rock that will not fall

An hour and a half down the coast road, with the sea on one side almost the whole way and salt pans and casuarina on the other. Leave after breakfast and you are in Mamallapuram before lunch.

The temple on the beach is the one everybody photographs and it deserves it: built around 700 AD, granite rather than the softer stone everything else here is cut from, and standing directly on the shore with the surf a few metres away. It is the oldest structural stone temple in south India and the sea has been working on it for thirteen centuries.

Afterwards, walk up into the town's rocky spine and look at a boulder the size of a house sitting on a slope at an angle that should not hold. Nobody has ever managed to move it, and a colonial governor is supposed to have tried with elephants.

  1. 09:30

    Drive from Chennai to Mamallapuram

    Travel

    Ninety minutes on the East Coast Road. There are crocodile and snake parks along the way if you have children with you, and salt pans if you do not.

  2. 16:00

    Shore Temple

    Religious

    Built around 700 AD and standing on the sand ever since, with a Shiva lingam in the central shrine. Come back at sunrise if you can; it faces east and it was designed to catch it.

  3. 18:00

    Krishna's Butterball

    Other

    A granite boulder several metres across, balanced on a slope on about a square metre of contact. Everybody photographs themselves pretending to hold it up. Everybody is right to.

  4. 20:00

    Seafood dinner off Othavadai Street

    Eat

    Fish, prawns and crab, priced by weight and grilled to order. Pick from the ice and agree the price before it is cooked.

With more time: The stonemasons' workshops along the main road cut granite by hand all day, mostly to order for temples elsewhere in India. Watching one of them work for ten minutes explains more about the monuments than any label does.

Day 5 in Mamallapuram

The bas-relief, the five chariots and a cave full of tigers

A whole day of seventh-century rock carving, all of it within two kilometres, most of it free to walk up to.

Start with the enormous relief on the face of a boulder near the centre of town. It is roughly thirty metres by fifteen, carved with gods, sages, an entire family of elephants and a cat pretending to meditate while mice look on, and archaeologists have argued for a century about which story it tells.

Then south to five free-standing shrines cut downwards out of a single ridge of rock, each in a different architectural style, with a stone elephant, a lion and a bull beside them. They were never finished and never consecrated, which is why they look like a set of models.

Finish a few kilometres up the coast at a rock-cut shrine ringed with carved lion heads, in a grove by the sea where almost nobody goes.

  1. 08:30

    Arjuna's Penance

    Historic

    One of the largest bas-reliefs in the world, carved into a natural cleft that would have run with water down the middle of the scene. Go early, before the light flattens it.

  2. 11:00

    Five Rathas

    Religious

    Five seventh-century shrines carved top-down out of one outcrop, each imitating a different building tradition in stone. The elephant beside them is the best-loved sculpture in the state.

  3. 16:30

    Tiger Cave

    Religious

    Four kilometres north, in a grove above the beach: a shallow rock-cut shrine surrounded by carved heads that look like tigers or lions depending on who is arguing. Usually deserted.

With more time: The lighthouse on the hill dates from 1887 and is open to visitors, and the caves and shrines scattered around it are unticketed. An hour up there at the end of the afternoon takes in the whole town, the sea and the paddy behind.

Day 6 in Pondicherry

Down to Pondicherry, an ashram and the promenade

Two hours further south, past backwaters and fishing villages, and the road delivers you into a town that looks like nowhere else in India.

Pondicherry was a French possession for close to three centuries and remained one for seven years after the rest of the country became independent. The seaward half of the old town still runs on French street names, with high compound walls painted mustard and grey.

Spend the afternoon at the ashram, which is the town's other identity: a spiritual community founded here in the 1920s that owns a great deal of Pondicherry and runs much of it. Then walk the seafront at dusk with everybody else, when it is closed to cars from half past five.

  1. 10:00

    Drive from Mamallapuram to Pondicherry

    Travel

    About two hours on the coast road. Auroville is signposted a few kilometres before the town if you want to break the journey.

  2. 16:00

    Sri Aurobindo Ashram

    Other

    The reason many Indians come to Pondicherry at all. The main courtyard, with the flower-covered samadhi in it, is kept in complete silence; shoes off, phones off, and no photographs.

  3. 18:00

    Promenade Beach

    Nature

    A kilometre and a bit of seafront from the war memorial to Dupleix's statue, closed to traffic every evening. There is no sand, just rocks and a wide pavement, and by seven it is the entire town.

With more time: Auroville, ten kilometres north, is an experimental township founded in 1968 and now home to several thousand people from around fifty countries. Visiting the golden meditation dome at its centre needs booking a day or two ahead.

Day 7 in Pondicherry

The French quarter: a basilica, bronzes and a park

Pondicherry is a walking day and a short one. The whole French quarter is about eight blocks by six, and the pleasure of it is in the doorways rather than the monuments.

The basilica is the exception worth queueing for, a Gothic Revival church in a town of neoclassical ones, with a set of stained glass panels telling the life of Christ that were made in France and shipped out.

The museum a few streets away is small and unexpectedly good. Along with the bronzes and the colonial furniture there is a room of objects dug up at Arikamedu, the Roman trading post two kilometres south of town where amphorae and Mediterranean glass keep coming out of the ground.

End in the park in the middle of the quarter, under a white monument built in the reign of Napoleon III, which is the most French thing in Asia.

  1. 09:30

    Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

    Religious

    Gothic Revival, built by French missionaries, with stained glass panels of the life of Christ. It looks entirely wrong for the latitude and is much better inside than out.

  2. 11:30

    Pondicherry Museum

    Culture

    Chola bronzes, French colonial furniture, and the Roman finds from Arikamedu down the coast. Ninety minutes, and the least crowded good museum in the state.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch in the French quarter

    Eat

    Pondicherry does a genuine Franco-Tamil cooking, and the bakeries are the real inheritance. A baguette here is a baguette.

  4. 16:00

    Bharathi Park

    Leisure

    The green square at the heart of the quarter, with a white colonnaded monument in the middle raised under Napoleon III to commemorate a water supply. Benches, shade, and the town hall opposite.

With more time: The Tamil town west of the canal is where Pondicherry actually lives, and the contrast is the interesting part: same grid, different architecture entirely, with deep verandahs and pillared fronts. Walk over for the market in the late afternoon.

Day 8 in Madurai

Inland to Madurai, and a palace lit up after dark

The long leg, and there is no way to make it short. Seven or eight hours by rail, southwest across the plain through Villupuram and Trichy, arriving mid-afternoon. Take the earliest train and eat on board.

Madurai announces itself as a low sprawl with one enormous painted tower sticking out of it. Leave the temple until tomorrow; going in for the first time when you are tired from a train is a waste of it.

Instead, the palace of the seventeenth-century ruler who paid for much of the temple's expansion. Only a fraction of the original survives, a colonnaded court and a domed hall, and it is grand enough that the missing part is hard to imagine. There is a sound and light show in the evening in English.

  1. 06:30

    Train from Pondicherry to Madurai Junction

    Travel

    Seven to eight hours, usually with a change at Villupuram. Book chair car or second sitting a few days out, and take more water than you think.

  2. 17:00

    Thirumalai Nayakkar Mahal

    Historic

    What is left of a 1636 palace, which is a courtyard of enormous columns and a domed audience hall. Twenty minutes to look at, and worth staying for the evening show if the timing works.

  3. 20:00

    Dinner near the temple

    Eat

    Madurai is a serious eating town, with a street of stalls that only opens at night and does jigarthanda, a cold drink of milk, syrup and seaweed jelly that the city is known for.

With more time: If you drove rather than took the train, the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur is on the way and is the single greatest building the Chola dynasty put up. It was finished in 1010 AD and the tower is over sixty metres of solid granite.

Day 9 in Madurai

The Meenakshi temple, Gandhi's dhoti and the Jain hills

Be at the temple when it opens. Fourteen gate towers, the tallest around fifty metres, every one of them covered from base to spire in painted plaster figures, and inside them a complex of halls, corridors and a tank that covers about six hectares.

It is dedicated to Meenakshi, a goddess with a fish-shaped eye, and to Shiva as her husband, and it is one of the very few great temples in India where the goddess outranks the god. Non-Hindus can go into the outer precincts and the halls but not the inner sanctums. Phones are not allowed in at all. Allow three hours and get lost on purpose.

The afternoon is quieter. A museum in an old palace of the queens holds the cloth Gandhi had on when he was shot, and it was in Madurai in 1921 that he first gave up western clothes.

Then a hill outside town where Jain monks carved beds, inscriptions and reliefs into the rock from the second century BC onwards, with a view back over the whole plain at sunset.

  1. 05:00

    Meenakshi Amman Temple

    Religious

    Fourteen towers, a hall of 985 carved pillars, and a working temple that takes fifteen thousand people a day. Leave the phone at the hotel; the lockers at the gate are chaos.

  2. 11:00

    Gandhi Memorial Museum

    Culture

    A small museum in a seventeenth-century palace with one extraordinary object in it: the bloodstained dhoti Gandhi was wearing when he was assassinated. Closed Fridays.

  3. 17:00

    Samanar Hills

    Historic

    Eight kilometres out, a granite hill carved with Jain beds, inscriptions and reliefs dating from the second century BC to the twelfth AD. Climb it for the last of the light.

With more time: Go back to the temple after dinner. At about half past nine the image of Shiva is carried in procession to the goddess's bedchamber for the night, with drums and pipes, and the crowd follows. It happens every day and it is the best half hour in Madurai.

Day 10 in Madurai

Last morning in Madurai

Madurai's airport is a twenty minute drive south and flies to Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Colombo. Trains north to Chennai take about eight hours; the overnight is the sensible one.

Before that, the flower market on the west side of the temple opens before dawn and is finished by eight. Jasmine is sold by weight here in quantities that are hard to believe, and the whole street smells of it. It costs nothing and it is the last thing worth doing.

  1. 06:30

    The morning flower market

    Note

    Jasmine, marigold and tuberose, sold by the kilo from six until about eight. Buy a string for a few rupees and wear it.

  2. 08:30

    To Madurai airport or the junction

    Travel

    Twenty minutes south to the airport, ten to the station. Traffic around the temple is bad from about nine, so leave before it.

Before you go

When to go

Tamil Nadu runs on a different calendar from the rest of India. Its rain comes from the northeast monsoon between October and December, which is exactly when the north is at its best, and its dry season is January to March.

So: January and February, ideally. March is fine. April to June is genuinely punishing on the plains, with Madurai regularly over 40 degrees and no relief at night. The southwest monsoon in June and July mostly misses this side of the mountains.

Getting between the four

Chennai to Mamallapuram takes about ninety minutes on the coast road, and Mamallapuram to Pondicherry another two hours on the same one. Hire a car for both; buses run constantly but the road is worth seeing from a window you control.

Pondicherry to Madurai is the long one, seven to eight hours by rail with a change at Villupuram unless you get the direct service. Take the earliest departure. The alternative, and the better one if the budget allows, is to hire a car and break the journey at Thanjavur, which puts a Chola temple of 1010 AD in the middle of an otherwise dull day.

Temples, and how to behave in them

Shoes come off outside, and you leave them with an attendant for a few rupees rather than carrying them. Cover shoulders and knees. Phones and cameras are banned inside many sanctums, including at Madurai, and the ban is enforced at the door.

Several major temples admit non-Hindus to the outer courtyards but not the inner shrine. Nobody will be rude about this. Go in anyway: the courtyards, the pillared halls and the tanks are most of the architecture.

Food, and coffee

Lunch is rice on a banana leaf with six or eight things around it, refilled until you fold the leaf towards you to say stop. Breakfast is idli, dosa, pongal and vada, and it is better at a crowded place with steel tables than anywhere with a tablecloth.

Filter coffee here is a serious matter: dark, sweet, boiled with milk and poured between a tumbler and a bowl until it foams. Ask for it less sweet if you must, but ask for it.

The gopurams are what you come for and the ordinary hours are what stay. Coffee at a steel counter at seven in the morning. A stonemason's chisel going in a yard off the main road. The smell of jasmine outside a temple gate at dusk, which is the smell of the whole state.

Ten days covers the four towns and leaves afternoons over. Sit them out somewhere with a fan.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is ten days enough for Tamil Nadu?
For this coastal run, yes. The state has far more: Thanjavur, Trichy, Chettinad, the Nilgiri hills and Kanyakumari at the tip would each add days, and a full temple circuit is closer to three weeks.
Can non-Hindus go into the temples?
Into the outer courtyards and halls of almost all of them, including Madurai, which is where most of the architecture is. The inner sanctums are usually restricted. Dress modestly, take your shoes off, and leave the camera outside where signs say to.
Is Chennai worth three nights?
Two would also work, and if you are tight on time that is where to cut. Chennai is a city to see specific things in rather than to wander, and Mamallapuram is much more pleasant to sleep in.
How do I handle the Pondicherry to Madurai leg?
Earliest train, or a hired car with a stop at Thanjavur. What does not work is leaving at midday, which turns a travelling day into a wasted one.
When is the best time to visit?
January to March. October to December is the northeast monsoon, which is when the rain falls here, and April to June is very hot inland.
Is Tamil Nadu easy to travel in?
Yes. Roads are good, trains are frequent, food is cheap and excellent, and there is far less hustle than on the northern circuit. English is widely spoken; Hindi is not, and asking in it goes down badly.
Can I change this plan?
Yes. Copy it and move the nights around. The order is worth keeping: it runs down the coast and then inland, which means one long journey rather than three medium ones.