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Before I retired, I had probably spent close to 5 of my 26.5 years on Earth in India, with 95% of that time being spent in Chennai visiting my grandparents and other relatives. Chennai is the capital of Tamil Nadu, which has a ton of history – according to Wiki, there are over 33 thousand 800+ year old temples in this state! Although I haven’t done it (yet), it’s like a more exaggerated version of how you can drive to any random town in Italy and stumble upon a magnificent centuries old church. The countryside here is dotted with ancient temples and their ornately decorated temple gopurams (towers). Figured I could learn more about my heritage and do a trip here, and my mom hadn’t seen a lot of the places I wanted to see so I waited for her to come visit before doing a road trip here. Since this is basically the food I grew up on, I obviously found the food here to be amazing…south Indian food is probably my overall favorite type of food. This was honestly probably the most eye-opening trip I’ve taken since I’ve left the US. The incredible amount of history here is almost impossible to fathom. Villages in the middle of nowhere would have these incredibly impressive temples, that if they were in any other country would be hailed as hyped up heritage sites. Yet they are a dime a dozen here. Further proof at how incompetent India’s tourism board is, though to be fair, a lot of these temples have strict rules banning both non-Hindus and photography. Tamil Nadu is definitely the place to go if you just want to gorge yourself on temples. I could easily have spent at least a few more weeks travelling around Tamil Nadu just to binge on temples (especially Kumbakonam, Chidambaram, and Kanchipuram). At least I’ll have new places to visit within Tamil Nadu as I come back to Chennai post-retirement to visit family.
Chennai
Feels weird including this in a travel blog since Chennai is almost like a 2nd home to me after Manhasset given all the time I have spent here (don’t @ me Chicago). But highlights here include Deepavali back in October when my dad was visiting, and all the sweets (Indian sweets are legitimately the best…no other country has the diversity in sweets and desserts that India does) for both Deepavali and Pongal, which is a south Indian harvest festival that was on Jan 15 this year. I also went to two movies on their 2nd day by the two biggest actors in Tamil cinema, Vijay (for his movie Bigil in Deepavali weekend), and Rajnikanth (for his movie Darbar the weekend before Pongal). Rajnikanth is basically like a God in Tamil Nadu, and to quote a certain someone, he could shoot someone in broad daylight and not lose any of his fans. Seeing his movie was a super unique experience, with the crowds whistling and cheering every time he appeared, beat up a bad guy, said any of his catchphrases, etc. Seeing movies with “superstar” actors in India is such a cool experience. And finally, it goes without saying, but the food in Chennai, from street food to restaurants to home cooked food, has been top notch. All my relatives here have been more than nice in helping make this a base for my travels so far.
Mahabalipuram
The first trip within Tamil Nadu my mom and I did was actually a day trip from my grandma’s place in Chennai to Mahabalipuram. I had been here a few times before as a kid, but hadn’t visited in over 10 years. I pretty much did not remember anything from my previous visits, so this was effectively like visiting for the first time. The main site to see here is the Shore Temple, which is a ~1300 year old temple that is carved out of one giant rock/boulder. A lot of the motifs were faded away due to age/erosion, but it was still a pretty impressive site.
After that, we went to what are called the Pancha Rathas, which were these five temples/shrines that were each carved out of a single piece of stone. I thought these were a bit cooler than the Shore Temple since the carvings were more intricate here (still not to the level of somewhere like Khajuraho obviously).
The highlight of Mahabalipuram for me were the cave temples, which were all bunched together in a sort of park area that was developed around these sites. A cave temple is just a temple/shrine that is carved into a boulder/hillside/mountainside. Again, having never been (yet), I’d imagine that Petra in Jordan is similar to what this was like, on a much grander scale. The cave temples in Ajanta and Ellora, which I’ll be seeing in early Feb, are also going to be like this but in a larger scale. One of the cooler cave shrines here was one for the god Brahma – in Hindu mythology, the three main gods are Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. There are apparently only a handful of shrines/temples for Brahma in the world, so it was pretty neat to see this. Overall, some of the carvings in stone here were awesome, and the most impressive thing was how these massive boulders were carved in and had temples built out of them. This was all obviously one connected piece of rock as well, which makes it even crazier.
Madurai
My mom and I took a flight to Madurai, and we then did a road trip from there to Rameswaram to Chettinad to Thanjavur to Trichy. The main thing to see in Madurai is the Meenakshi Amman Temple, which is honestly one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. I allegedly visited with my parents 15+ years ago but have no memory of that. Since this is an active temple and not just a historic ruin, no cameras/phones were allowed. It was quite a stunning site to see the massive gopurams and impressive temple water tank from within the site. In a way, this visit really gave more context to the ruins I saw in Cambodia and Hampi…the Amman temple here is a ridiculously grand structure and the bright colors and intact hallways are what the Hampi and Cambodia temples probably looked like back in the day. Weirdly enough, I found the lack of color to look more “imposing” (stone grey pillars with animals and guardians carved into them)…when colored in like they were in Madurai, it almost looked cartoonish. That said, I think in general I’ve always enjoyed the more “ruined” look for almost any type of man-made structure (it’s why Chernobyl is near the top of my travel bucket list), which is why I probably prefer the appearance of these Hindu temples in a more ruined state than in their brightly colored modern state. My one caveat here is that the colored gopurams are definitely cooler than the ruined ones, and the Meenakshi Amman temple is probably the best temple for that.
The four main gopurams for this temple were for each entrance (North/South/East/West), and these were massive. You could easily spend 10-15 minutes just staring at each one, as they each had 100s of idols carved into them, and they were all brightly colored and intricately detailed. It’s a very impressive site.
We also visited a few other smaller temples, all of which were architecturally impressive and ridiculously old. One annoying thing is that all of these temples in Tamil Nadu are closed from 12pm-4pm, so the priests can take a well earned nap after eating lunch. We got to a Narasimha cave temple (Vishnu avatar of a half lion/half man) that was in the the countryside and about 20 minutes outside of Madurai around 3:30pm, so I had some time to kill while waiting for the temple to open. Went for a walk around the village area, and literally stumbled upon an Archaeological Survey of India sign that pointed towards a path up a boulder/hill, which led to these 1000 year old Jain stone carvings along the boulder. I still cannot wrap my head around how much ancient history there is in Tamil Nadu. My pet theory is that due to the lack of Islamic rule in South India, the ancient temples that dot the countryside were not destroyed to the degree that they probably were up North. The flip side of this is obviously that the religious heritage sites in Tamil Nadu are a bit more monotonous than elsewhere in India, but I could see temples for days and days and not get bored.
Rameswaram
Due to the Pongal festival, there were literally tens of thousands of people crammed into this temple while we visited. It was an absolute nightmare – worse than even Varanasi with regards to the crowds. Was thankfully only here for one day. I can definitely see how stampedes are a thing after witnessing this. To be fair, the temple would be pretty impressive if it wasn’t infested with humans – it’s a labyrinth of massive corridors and ancient stone pillars.
Afterwards, we went to this small town called Dhaneshkudi which was a few miles east of Rameswaram. A cyclone here had destroyed the town back in the 70s, and there was this cool destroyed church from that sitting on the beach there. Another highlight was this amazing (and super spicy!) crab curry that I had from some beachside shack in Dhaneshkudi.
The drive from Madurai to Rameswaram was a little over three hours, and in this drive we literally saw hundreds of countryside temples just scattered around the palm trees and paddy fields. All of these temples had brightly colored gopurams that stuck out so you could literally see them from a mile away. We stopped by a few on the way, and these were all somehow fairly crowded as well, despite being in the middle of nowhere. And as mentioned before, most of these were pretty neat and cool to look at, with their carved stone pillars and idols.
Chettinad
After Rameswaram, we drove another 3ish hours to the Chettinad region. Same as before, the countryside was filled with ancient, colorful temples everywhere you looked on the drive here. Chettinad is a cluster of 70-80 villages that were inhabited by the Chettiars, a caste of traders, at the turn of the 20th century. These traders got incredibly wealthy while working with the British, and they built these gaudy, extravagant mansions in their villages with teak wood imported from Burma, marble imported from Italy, and chandeliers imported from all over Europe. Many of these Gatsby-esque mansions now lie in ruin as they proved to be far too expensive to maintain, and the owners moved out while the mansions slowly rotted away. It’s pretty cool to drive around rustic Indian villages where you’ll spot the occasional massive house that is abandoned. It definitely fed into my appetite for abandoned/ruined sightseeing.
We stayed in this amazing place called Chidambara Vilas. This was one of the grander mansions that was built, and the current owners converted this into a hotel to make money. The hotel itself is like a living museum because of this. We used this as a base to drive around the Chettinad region, visiting some other mansions (both maintained and ruined) as well as numerous temples. The temples in this region are incredibly well maintained relative to the other village temples we saw in Tamil Nadu – literally every one of these 70-80 villages has a 1000+ year old temple with a tall, brightly colored gopuram, a massive water tank, and intricate stone pillars throughout the interior of the temple. The Chettiars basically spent their wealth by building gaudy mansions and by maintaining and expanding their local temples. The other great thing about Chettinad was the food. Chettinad food is known for their spice levels, and this stuff legitimately had my mouth burning, in a good way. The food had some really nice, intense flavors that stuck with you well after the meal.
Seeing the temples in Chettinad especially has also made me realize that many of these no-name, active temples are just as impressive as the “big-name” heritage sites, like Mahabalipuram, Hampi, and (probably) Elephanta, Ajanta, and Ellora. Though I’ll be able to confirm on those suspicions in a few weeks after my next trip…I’m sure I will still love those caves since I haven’t gotten bored of temples yet, but it really puts the incredible temples of Tamil Nadu in perspective for me. Regarding temples in India, Hampi still takes the cake for me due to the exploration and ruins aspect, but the temples I saw on this trip were even more architecturally impressive. And it’s definitely cool to see these temples act as monuments of living history – they are preserved close to their original, thousand year old states because they are in use and the design was practical, not due to any 3rd party pressure from it being a heritage site. While most of this trip was great (really except for Rameswaram), I do think that Chettinad nips Thanjavur as being the highlight of the trip so far. Just one of the most unique places I’ve been to, and it was cool to spend time in legit villages away from the hustle and bustle of the chaotic Indian cities – which I do love!
Thanjavur
Thanjavur was awesome. We saw three temples here, all about 1000 years old and built by the Cholas . The Chola Empire were the ones who spread Hinduism throughout SE Asia, and the similarities between these 3 Chola temples and the ruined temples at Angkor blew my mind. I never really appreciated just how similar the architectural styles would be. All three of these temples were not colored, but were in a much better state than the ruins of Angkor (or even Hampi).
The first temple we saw here was a couple hours north of Thanjavur, in a town called Gangakoinda Cholapuram. The Chola temple here was modeled after the one in Thanjavur and was marginally smaller (the son, out of respect for his father who built the Thanjavur temple, made this one just a tad bit smaller). This was probably my favorite one, because the Thanjavur temple unfortunately had a ton of maintenance work going on. The gopuram here was an absolute unit, and the level of detail on all of the idols was amazing. I particularly liked the guardians on the doorways in their dancing Nataraja pose. The Nataraja pose is one of the more iconic images of Hinduism and originates from the Chola empire.
The second one was in a town that was about halfway between Thanjavur and Gangakoinda Cholapuram, in a town called Darasuram. This one was a bit different than the other two temples in that it only had a moderately sized gopuram, but it had a really cool giant pavillion with hallways of pillars everywhere. If you haven’t noticed already from my photos over the past few months, I love those corridors of pillars so this was a really fun place to just wander around.
The last one was the temple in Thanjavur, which the locals call “The Big Temple” in Tamil. This objectively was definitely the most impressive of the three temples (it’s the most famous for a reason…), but there was an insane amount of renovation work being done so it was more difficult to enjoy the atmosphere because of that. Like the temple in Gangakoinda Cholapuram, the various massive guardians in their Nataraja poses were the personal highlights for me.
Trichy
The main attraction in Trichy was the Sri Rangam temple, which is the largest active temple in the world and the second largest temple period, after Angkor Wat. This is an absolutely massive complex that is basically like a small walled city – we spent a little over four hours in here! There’s this giant, vibrantly colored gopuram in the south entrance that dwarfs even the ones in Madurai…however, not to be too picky here, but this gopuram didn’t have any idols in it, so I didn’t find it as cool as the ones in Madurai. Like any good and active Tamil temple, it was an overload of color once you walked in and around the temple complex. You could actually see these gopurams tower over surrounding area when we climbed up a rock fort temple to get a 360 view of Trichy.
The biggest surprise in Trichy was the Jambukeswarar temple, which our driver recommended to us. This was just your typical 1500 year old temple that is still in use and lying around…I swear Tamil Nadu is ridiculous with the amount of these temples that are just scattered about. This had some of the most impressive carvings on its’ stone pillars and walls (was even better than the Chettinad village temples in this respect), and you could see ancient Tamil inscriptions carved on the temple walls as well. The ancient Tamil script actually reminded me of the unknowns from Pokemon Gold/Silver, for what it’s worth. We saw these ancient inscriptions on countless temples during this trip but I thought that they were most prominent in this temple.
Overall, this was a fantastic trip. I could definitely spend at least a few weeks just driving across Tamil Nadu and visit all these ancient temples. There’s almost too much to see here, and the options are overwhelming. You can pop into almost any no-name temple in Tamil Nadu and be wowed by the color and architecture – just make sure you have non-temple plans to keep busy between 12 and 4pm!
Next up I’m going to Goa in a few days, which I honestly don’t think I’ll like too much but we’ll see how it goes. My dad and I have both always said that if you want to go waste money on a beach vacation, just stay in your house and crank the heat up. But I’m going to be in Mumbai next weekend to meet up with my high school friend Martin (Ooooh friend!) for his buddy’s wedding, which he got me an invite for, and Goa is near Mumbai so I figured I’d pop there for a few days. My mom will meet me in Mumbai after the wedding and we’re going to the Ajanta and Ellora caves after that.
Chennai
I also did some more traditional “sightseeing” in Chennai as my last bit in India before flying to France. Saw a bit of the historic British parts of the city – Fort St. George, Santhome Cathedral, the train station, the Ripon Buildings, which my great grandfather constructed. It makes sense that this reminded me a ton of Calcutta and some of the British parts of Mumbai and New Delhi. Also saw the Kapaleeshwarar Temple in the Mylapore district, which was yet another really cool 1000+ year old temple that was similar to a lot of the other temples I saw in Tamil Nadu. Having visited this city every summer for two months between 3rd and 12th grade, plus numerous visits before and after, I did gain a new appreciation for it by seeing the “local” sights.