Coromandel & Temple Trails of Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu’s temples were never museums; they are working towns with gopurams. Over a fortnight you go from the Pallava rock-cut shore at Mahabalipuram to Thanjavur’s thousand-year-old Brihadisvara, through the Chola bronze foundries at…

Length: 14 days, 13 nights
From: ₹3,22,000 per person
Pace: Balanced
Stops: 6
Best months: November to March

The route

6 stops over 14 days

Chennai
Mahabalipuram
Pondicherry
Kumbakonam
Thanjavur
Madurai

The Ardhajama palanquin ritual at Madurai’s Meenakshi temple
Chola bronze casting by lost wax at Swamimalai
Sunrise on the Shore Temple before the coaches arrive
Nataraja’s golden hall at Chidambaram, with Dikshitar priests
Kaveri delta drive past Darasuram and Gangaikondacholapuram

Day by day

What actually happens

Length: 14 days
Stops: 6
Pace: Balanced
From: ₹3,22,000

1

Chennai

Arrival in Chennai

Your flight arrives at Chennai and you are met and driven to a hotel on Binny Road that has been taking guests since 1854. The rest of the day is unstructured. Early evening on Marina Beach is the local ritual: fried sundal in paper cones, kite-sellers, and the Bay of Bengal going flat grey as the light drops.

Night: Taj Connemara, Chennai
2B

Chennai

Bronzes, Mylapore and the sea

The Government Museum’s bronze gallery holds the finest Chola figures anywhere — the Ardhanarishvara from Tiruvenkadu, the Kaliya-mardana Krishna. Then Mylapore before the heat: the Kapaleeshwarar tank, flower-sellers threading jasmine by the yard, filter coffee at Rayar’s Mess. San Thome Basilica in the afternoon, built over what is claimed to be the tomb of Saint Thomas.

Night: Taj Connemara, Chennai
3B D

Mahabalipuram

Silk looms and the shore road

West first to Kanchipuram, one of the seven sacred cities, where the eighth-century Kailasanathar is sandstone rather than granite and still shows traces of its original paint. A weaver will show you a six-yard sari on the pit loom, zari thread counted in grams of silver. Then south down the East Coast Road to Mahabalipuram by late afternoon.

Night: Radisson Blu Resort Temple Bay, Mahabalipuram
4B

Mahabalipuram

The Pallava shore at dawn

Out at six thirty for the Shore Temple, when the granite is still cool and the light comes in low off the sea. Arjuna’s Penance is the largest bas-relief in the world: elephants, a cat pretending to meditate, and the Ganga descending down a natural cleft. The Five Rathas afterwards, each cut whole from a single boulder.

Night: Radisson Blu Resort Temple Bay, Mahabalipuram
5B L

Mahabalipuram

Sculptors, crocodiles, a slow afternoon

The stone-carving street still works to the old proportions; a master will explain why a deity’s face is measured in nine talas. North along the ECR, DakshinaChitra has relocated Chettiar and Syrian Christian houses rebuilt beam by beam, and the Madras Crocodile Bank holds gharial and mugger in breeding pools. Afternoon free by the sea.

Night: Radisson Blu Resort Temple Bay, Mahabalipuram
6B D

Pondicherry

Down the coast to the French town

Two hours south, with a stop at the Dutch cemetery at Sadras and, if the tide is right, the salt pans at Marakkanam where flamingos feed in winter. Pondicherry’s Ville Blanche is a grid of ochre walls and bougainvillea running down to a rocky promenade closed to cars. Dinner is Creole — a French-Tamil kitchen that exists nowhere else.

Night: Palais de Mahé, Pondicherry
7B

Pondicherry

Ashram, Auroville and a walk at six

A guided walk at half past six through the Tamil and French quarters, past the Sri Aurobindo Ashram where meditation around the samadhi is held in complete silence. Auroville later: the Matrimandir gardens, and its inner chamber if booked a day ahead. Afternoon at the Sunday market or a paper-making unit that has run since 1959.

Night: Palais de Mahé, Pondicherry
8B D

Kumbakonam

Chidambaram and the Chola giants

Inland to Chidambaram, where Shiva dances as Nataraja in a hall roofed with gold tiles and served by hereditary Dikshitar priests who wear their hair knotted to one side. Then Gangaikondacholapuram, built by Rajendra I to mark a march to the Ganges — vast, empty, and better proportioned than its more famous twin. Kumbakonam by dusk.

Night: Mantra Koodam, Kumbakonam
9B L

Kumbakonam

Darasuram and the bronze casters

Airavatesvara at Darasuram is small enough to read: a stone chariot with wheels, a flight of steps that once sang under the foot, and friezes of acrobats. At Swamimalai, the stapathis still cast by cire perdue, the wax model destroyed to release a single bronze. You watch the pouring if the day’s work allows, then the finishing chisels.

Night: Mantra Koodam, Kumbakonam
10B

Kumbakonam

Delta towns and a morning of music

A slow day in the Kaveri delta. Thirubhuvanam’s Kampaharesvara is the last of the four great Chola temples and sees almost no visitors. At Tiruvaiyaru, the samadhi of Saint Thyagaraja draws Carnatic singers from three continents each January; a local vidwan will sing two kritis for you in the hall. Coffee and evening at the temple tank.

Night: Mantra Koodam, Kumbakonam
11B D

Thanjavur

Brihadisvara, and the library

Forty minutes to Thanjavur. The Brihadisvara was finished in 1010 and its vimana rises 66 metres, capped by an 80-tonne cupola; the shadow, they say, never falls outside the plinth. Inside the cloister, Chola frescoes were found under Nayak plaster in 1931. Later, the Saraswathi Mahal Library’s palm-leaf manuscripts and the palace’s Nayak durbar hall.

Night: Svatma, Thanjavur
12B L

Madurai

Trichy, Srirangam, then Madurai

West to Tiruchirappalli, where 434 rock-cut steps climb to the Ucchi Pillayar shrine and a view over the braided Kaveri. Srirangam, on the island below, is the largest working Hindu temple complex in the world — seven concentric walls, twenty-one gopurams, a small town inside. Three hours further south brings you to Madurai in the evening.

Night: Heritage Madurai
13B D

Madurai

Meenakshi, and the god put to bed

Meenakshi Sundareshwarar has fourteen gopurams covered in some 33,000 painted figures and a thousand-pillar hall where each column is different. Go barefoot; the granite is cold at seven. Flower market at Mattuthavani beforehand, jasmine sold by weight. At nine at night the Ardhajama procession carries Sundareshwarar in palanquin to Meenakshi’s chamber, as it does every evening.

Night: Heritage Madurai
14B

Madurai

Departure from Madurai

The last morning. If your flight is late, there is time for the Gandhi Memorial Museum, which holds the blood-stained dhoti he was wearing when he was shot, or a final idli at Murugan Idli Shop with three chutneys and a spoon of ghee. Transfer to Madurai airport for the connection home. The journey ends here.

Night: No overnight — departure day

What the price covers

Thirteen nights at the properties listed, on twin share
Breakfast daily and the other meals marked against each day
Private air-conditioned car with a Tamil-speaking driver for fourteen days
Temple guide with epigraphy training through the delta towns
Bronze foundry visit at Swamimalai and a silk weaving demonstration at Kanchipuram
Private Carnatic recital arranged at Tiruvaiyaru
All monument and temple entry fees listed in the itinerary
24-hour on-tour support from our Chennai representative