Tamil Nadu · 4 days, 3 nights
Chettinad, and the temple at Madurai
Merchants' mansions, tiles made by hand, and one of the great living temples.
The journey
In the nineteenth century the Nattukottai Chettiars banked across Burma, Ceylon, Vietnam and Malaya, and brought the money home to seventy-odd villages in Sivaganga and Pudukottai. What they built there is unlike anything else in India: courtyard houses of Burmese teak and Italian marble, Belgian mirrors and Indonesian crockery, many of them now half empty. An hour and a half away is Madurai, and the Meenakshi temple, which is the opposite — never empty for a day.
Route
- Madurai
- Meenakshi temple
- Karaikudi
- Kanadukathan
- Athangudi
What stays with you
- 01The Meenakshi temple: fourteen gopurams, the southern one 52 metres, built in the late sixteenth century
- 02Chettiar mansions at Kanadukathan, entered rather than photographed from the gate
- 03Athangudi tiles, still pressed by hand on sheets of glass, one at a time
- 04Chettinad cooking, which is a cuisine rather than a spice level
- 05Karaikudi's antique quarter, where the houses are being sold off piece by piece
- 06A night in one of the mansions, because several are now the only way they survive
Day by day
A shape rather than a timetable. Days move, and most people move one or two of them.
1
Into Madurai. The Meenakshi temple in the evening, which is when the city uses it.
2
The temple again at first light, then east to Chettinad and into a mansion for the night.
3
Kanadukathan and the houses. The tile works at Athangudi in the afternoon, and the antique shops at Karaikudi.
4
A last village or two, and back to Madurai or on to Thanjavur.
Shall we plan it?
Tell us roughly when, and how many of you, and we will come back with dates, a price and anything we would change about the route.
Or write to us at info@scenicescapesindia.com
Tamil Nadu