5 Best Places to visit in South India in 2020

Best Places to visit in South India in 2020

South India is simply too vast and too complex to explore in a single trip. It makes more sense to focus on one, two or perhaps three regions, depending on your time frame. The following itineraries showcase both the classic attractions and lesser known gems of three distinct regions, from the temples of Tamil Nadu to the sweltering tropical backwaters of Kerala.

Top 5 Best Places to visit in South India in 2020

1. Old Goa

Old Goa - South India Tourism

Old Goa Belfries and Baroque church facades loom over trees on the banks of the Mandovi, all that remains of a once-splendid colonial city.

Just 10 km from Panjim, and at one time a byword for oriental splendour, Portugal’s former capital in India, Old Goa, was virtually abandoned following malaria and cholera epidemics from the seventeenth century onwards.

Today, despite its UNESCO World Heritage Site status, you need considerable imagination to picture the once great city at its zenith, when it boasted a population of several hundred thousand. The maze of twisting streets, piazzas and ochre-washed villas has vanished, and all that remains is a score of cream painted churches and convents. Foremost among the surviving monuments is the tomb of St Francis Xavier, the legendary sixteenth-century missionary, whose desiccated remains are enshrined in the Basilica of Bom Jesus – the object of veneration for Catholics from across Asia and beyond.

Viceroy’s Archway

Old Goa’s grandest mansions formerly lined the riverfront, and the best direction from which to approach the site is still from the north. Begin your tour at the Viceroy’s Archway (1597), which would have been the first structure to greet new arrivals in the seventeenth century.

Constructed to commemorate Vasco da Gama’s first landfall in India, it features a Bible-toting figure resting his foot on the cringing figure of a “native” on one side, and a statue of Da Gama himself on the other.

Church of St Cajetan

A short way up the lane from the Archway, the spectacular domed Church of St Cajetan (1651) was modelled on St Peter’s in Rome by monks from the Theatine Order. While it boasts a Corinthian exterior, non-European elements are also evident in the decoration, such as the cashew-nut designs in the carving of the pulpit.

The Sé (St Catherine’s Cathedral)

The Portuguese viceroy Redondo (1561–64) commissioned the Sé, or St Catherine’s Cathedral, southwest of St Cajetan’s, to be “a grandiose church worthy of the wealth, power and fame of the Portuguese who dominated the seas from the Atlantic to the Pacific”. Today it stands larger than any church in Portugal, although it was beset by problems, not least a lack of funds and the motherland’s temporary loss of independence to Spain.

It took eighty years to build and was not consecrated until 1640. On the Tuscan-style exterior, the one surviving tower houses the Golden Bell, cast in Cuncolim (south Goa) in the seventeenth century. During the Inquisition its tolling announced the start of the gruesome autos-da-fé that were held in the square outside, when suspected heretics were subjected to public torture and burned at the stake.

The scale and opulence of the Corinthian-style interior is overwhelming; no fewer than fifteen altars are arranged around the walls, among them one featuring a Miraculous Cross, said to heal the sick. The staggeringly ornate, gilded main altar is surrounded by panels depicting episodes from the life of St Catherine of Alexandria (died 307 AD).

Convent of St Francis of Assisi

On the north side of Old Goa’s central square stands the Convent of St Francis of Assisi, built by Franciscan monks in 1517. Today, the core of the Archeological Museum inside consists of a gallery of portraits of Portuguese viceroys, painted by local artists under Italian supervision.

Other exhibits include coins, domestic Christian wooden sculpture, and downstairs in the cloister, pre- Portuguese Hindu sculpture. Next door, the Church of St Francis of Assisi (1521) features fine decorative frescoes, hidalgos’ tombstones in the floor paving and paintings on wood showing the life of St Francis.

 
Basilica of Bom Jesus

Site of the world-famous mausoleum of St Francis Xavier, the Basilica of Bom Jesus, on the south side of the main square, is India’s most revered and architecturally accomplished church. Work on the building was started in 1589 and took sixteen years to complete. In 1964, it became the first church in South Asia to be promoted to a Minor Basilica, by order of Pope Pius XII, and today forms the main focus for Christian worship in the old colonial capital.

Is it believed that the design of the basilica is derived from the Gesù, the Jesuits’ headquarters in Rome, and, with its idiosyncratic blend of Neoclassical restraint and Baroque extravagance, is typical of the late Renaissance. The sumptuous facade, the most ornate in Goa, is dominated by the IHS motif, standing for Iesus Hominum Salvator (“Jesus Saviour of Men”) a feature of all Jesuit churches.

St Francis Xavier – Travel Map Fly Bytes

Francis Xavier, the “Apostle of the Indies”, was born in 1506 in the old kingdom of Navarre, now part of Spain. When the Portuguese king, Dom Joao III (1521–57), received reports of corruption and dissolute behaviour among the Portuguese in Goa, it was Xavier whom the Jesuit Order selected to restore the moral climate of the colony.

Arriving after a year-long journey, the young priest embarked on a programme of missionary work throughout southern India, converting an estimated thirty thousand people – primarily by performing such miracles as raising the dead and curing the sick with a touch of his beads.

Subsequent missions took him further afield to Sri Lanka, Malacca (Malaysia) and Japan, before his death from dysentery on the island of San Chuan (Sancian), off the Chinese coast in 1552. Although credited with converting more people to Christianity than anyone other than St Paul, Francis Xavier owes his subsequent canonization principally to the legend surrounding the fate of his mortal remains, which, when exhumed in China a year after burial, were found to be in a perfect state of preservation. His body was later removed and taken to Old Goa, where it has remained ever since, enshrined in the Basilica of Bom Jesus.

Plundered Relics

St Francis’s incorruptible corpse, however, has never rested entirely in peace. Chunks of it have been removed over the years by relic hunters and curious clerics: in 1614, the right arm was dispatched to the pope in Rome (where it allegedly wrote its name on paper), a hand was sent to Japan, and parts of the intestines to Southeast Asia. One Portuguese woman, Dona Isabel de Caron, even bit off the little toe of the cadaver; apparently, so much blood spurted into her mouth, it left a trail to her house and she was discovered.

Every ten years, the saint’s body is carried in a threehour ceremony from the Basilica of Bom Jesus to the Sé cathedral, where visitors file past, touch and photograph it. Around a quarter of a million pilgrims flock to view the corpse, these days a shrivelled and somewhat unsavoury spectacle.

The interior

The interior is positively plain by comparison to the exterior, but no less impressive, dominated by a massive gilt altarpiece and a huge central statue of St Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order, accompanied by the Infant Jesus. Swathed in lush gold leaf, the gigantic reredos filling the far end of the nave remains the basilica’s most arresting feature.

Its undisputed treasure, however, is to be found in the south transept: the mausoleum of St Francis was installed in 1698, a century and a half after his death, gifted to the Jesuits by the last of the Medicis, Cosimo III (1670–1723), Grand Duke of Tuscany, in exchange for the pillow on which the saint’s head was laid to rest. It took Florentine sculptor Giovanni Batista Saggini a decade to design and was made from precious marble

and coloured jaspers shipped from Italy.

Holy Hill

If the heat hasn’t got the better of you, head west up the lane leading from the bus stand to take in the cluster of monuments on Holy Hill, some of which date from the earliest phase of Christian building in Goa.

Convent of Santa Monica

The lane winds uphill, passing the weed-choked Convent of Santa Monica on the right. This was the only Goan convent at the time of its construction in 1627, and the largest one in Asia in its era. It housed around a hundred nuns and offered accommodation to women whose husbands were called away to other parts of the empire.

As they had to remain away from the public gaze, the nuns attended Mass in the choir loft of the adjacent chapel, where a Miraculous Cross rises above the figure of St Monica at the altar.

Museum of Christian Art

Next door to the Convent of Santa Monica stands Goa’s foremost Museum of Christian Art. Exhibits include processional crosses, ivory ornaments, damask silk clerical robes and some finely sculpted wooden icons dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, among them an unusual statue of John the Baptist wearing a tiger-skin wrap (in the style of the Hindu god Shiva).

Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary

Crowning the very top of the Holy Hill, the Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary, constructed in 1526 in the Manueline style (after the Portuguese king Manuel I, 1495–1521), features Ionic plasterwork with a double-storey portico, cylindrical turrets and a tower that commands fine views across the river from the terrace where Albuquerque surveyed the decisive battle of 1510. Its cruciform interior is unremarkable, except for the marble tomb of Catarina a Piró, believed to have been the first European woman to set foot in the colony.

A commoner, she eloped here to escape the scandal surrounding her romance with Portuguese nobleman Garcia de Sá, who later rose to be governor of Goa. Under pressure from no less than Francis Xavier, Garcia eventually married her, but only in articulo mortis as she lay on her deathbed. Her finely carved tomb, set in the wall beside the high altar, incorporates a band of intricate Gujarati-style ornamentation, probably imported from the Portuguese trading post of Diu.

2. Kuttanad: The Backwaters of Kerala

Backwaters of Kerala - Best Tourist Places

Backwater cruises, Kerala Explore the famous Kuttanad backwater region in a converted rice barge or punted canoe.

One of the most memorable experiences for travellers in India is the opportunity to take a boat journey on the backwaters of Kerala. The area known as Kuttanad stretches for 75 km from Kollam in the south to Kochi in the north, sandwiched between the sea and the hills. This bewildering labyrinth of shimmering waterways, composed of lakes, canals, rivers and rivulets, is lined with dense tropical greenery and preserves rural Keralan lifestyles that are completely hidden from the road.

The region’s bucolic way of life has long fascinated visitors. And the ever entrepreneurial Keralans were quick to spot its potential as a visitor destination – particularly after it was discovered that foreigners and wealthy tourists from India’s cities were prepared to pay vast sums in local terms to explore the area aboard converted rice barges, or kettu vallam.

Since its inception in the early 1990s, the houseboat tour industry has grown exponentially in both size and sophistication, and has brought with it major environmental drawbacks as well as increased prosperity. You can, however, explore this extraordinary region in lower-impact ways, too.

Tourist Cruises

The most popular excursion in the Kuttanad region is the full-day journey between Kollam and Alappuzha. All sorts of private hustlers offer their services, but the principal boats are run on alternate days by the ATDC and the DTPC.

The double-decker boats leave from both Kollam and Alappuzha daily, departing at 10.30am (10am check-in); tickets (₹400) can be bought in advance or on the day at the ATDC/DTPC counters, other agents and some hotels. Both companies make three stops during the 8hr journey, including one for lunch, and another 3hr north of Kollam at the Mata Amritanandamayi Math at Amritapuri (where “Amma” offers devotees her trademark hugs).

Although this is by far the main backwater route, many tourists find it too long, with crowded decks and intense sun. There’s also something faintly embarrassing about being cooped up with a crowd of fellow tourists, madly photographing any signs of life on the water or canal banks, while gangs of kids scamper alongside the boat screaming “one pen, one pen”.

Village Tours and Canoes

Quite apart from their significant environmental impact, most boats are too wide to squeeze into the narrower inlets connecting small villages. To reach these more idyllic, remote areas, therefore, you’ll need to charter a punted canoe.

The slower pace means you cover less distance in an hour, but the experience of being so close to the water, and those who live on it, tends to be correspondingly more rewarding. You’ll also find more formal “village tours” advertised across the Kuttanad area, tying together trips to watch coir-makers, rice farmers and boat-builders in action, with the opportunity to dine in a traditional Kerala village setting.

Kettu Vallam (Houseboats)

Whoever dreamed up the idea of showing tourists around the backwaters in old rice barges, or kettu vallam, could never have imagined that, more than two decades on, nine hundred or more of them would be chugging around Kuttanad waterways.

These houseboats, made of dark, oiled jackwood with canopies of plaited palm thatch and coir, are big business, and almost every accommodation seems to have one. The flashiest are fitted with a/c rooms, jacuzzis and widescreen plasma TVs on their teak sun decks and have bottles of imported wine in their fridges. At the opposite end of the scale are rough and ready transport barges with gut-thumping diesel engines, cramped bedrooms and minimal washing facilities.

Rates vary hugely depending on the quality, more than double over Christmas and New Year, and halve off-season during the monsoons. In practice, ₹7500–18,000 is the usual bracket for a trip on a two-bedroom, a/c boat with a proper bathroom, including three meals, in early December or mid-January. The cruise should last a minimum of 22 hours, though don’t expect to spend all of that on the move: running times are carefully calculated to spare gas. From sunset onwards you’ll be moored at a riverbank.

You’ll save quite a lot of cash, and be doing the fragile ecosystem a big favour, by opting for a more environmentally friendly punted kettu vallam. Rice barges were traditionally propelled by punt, and though it means you travel at a more leisurely pace, the experience is silent (great for wildlife spotting) and altogether more relaxing. 

Houseboat operators work out of Kollam and Kumarakom, but most are in Alappuzha, where you’ll find the lowest prices – but also the worst congestion on more scenic routes. Spend a day shopping around for a deal (your guesthouse or hotel-owner will be a good first port of call), or if you’re in Alappuzha, head to the main houseboat terminal at 9am to meet returning kettu vallam and question travellers as they disembark. Always check the boat over beforehand. It’s also a good idea to get the deal fixed on paper before setting off, and to withhold a final payment until the end of the cruise in case you’re not satisfied.

Local Ferries

Kettu vallam may offer the most comfortable way of cruising the backwaters, but you’ll get a much more vivid experience of what life is actually like in the region by jumping on one of the local ferries that serve its towns and villages. Particularly recommended is the trip from Alappuzha to Kottayam (dep. 7.30am, 9.30am, 11.30am, 2.30 & 5.15pm; 2hr 30min; ₹20), which winds across open lagoons and narrow canals, through coconut groves and islands.

Arrive early to get a good place with uninterrupted views. Good places to aim for from Alappuzha include Neerattupuram, Kidangara and Chambakulam; all are served by regular daily ferries, but you may have to change boats once or twice along the way, killing time in local cafés and toddy shops (all of which adds to the fun, of course).

3. Madurai Temple

Madurai Temple - South India Tour

Madurai, perhaps the definitive South Indian city, is centred on a spectacular medieval temple.

One of the oldest cities in South Asia, Madurai, on the banks of the River Vaigai, has been an important centre of worship and commerce for as long as there has been civilization in South India. It was often described as “the Athens of the East” and indeed, when the Greek ambassador Megasthenes visited in 302 BC, he wrote of its splendour and described its queen, Pandai, as “a daughter of

Herakles”.

The Roman geographer Strabo also wrote of Madurai, complaining that the city’s silk, pearls and spices were draining the imperial coffers of Rome. It was this lucrative trade that enabled the Pandyan dynasty to erect the mighty Meenakshi-Sundareswarar temple. Although now surrounded by a sea of modern concrete cubes, the massive gopuras of this vast complex, writhing with multicoloured mythological figures and crowned by golden finials, remain the greatest man-made spectacle of the South.

No fewer than 15,000 people pass through its gates every day and on Fridays (sacred to the goddess Meenakshi) numbers swell to more than 25,000, while the temple’s ritual life spills out into the streets in an almost ceaseless round of festivals and processions.

Although considerably enlarged and extended through the ages, the overall layout of Madurai’s old city, south of the River Vaigai, has remained largely unchanged since the first centuries AD, comprising a series of concentric squares centred on the massive Meenakshi Temple. Aligned with the cardinal points, the street plan forms a giant mandala, whose sacred properties are activated during the regular mass clockwise circumambulations of the central temple.

North of the river, Madurai becomes markedly more mundane and irregular. You’re only likely to cross the Vaigai to reach the city’s more expensive hotels or the Gandhi Museum.

4. Cricket at the Oval Maidan 

Cricket at the Oval Maidan

Join the locals at dusk as they congregate for ice cream, cricket and a chat in Mumbai’s most famous maidan (park).

Cricket

Cricket provides almost as much of a distraction as movies in the Maharashtrian capital, and you’ll see games in progress everywhere, from impromptu sunset knockabouts on Chowpatty Beach to more formal club matches in full whites at the gymkhanas lined up along Marine Drive. The Indian season runs from October through February.

Tickets for cup and test matches are almost as hard to come by as seats on commuter trains, but foreign visitors can sometimes gain preferential access to quotas through the Mumbai Cricket Association’s offices

on the first floor of Wankhede.

Brabourne Stadium -  Off Marine Drive

The world’s most prolific batsman in both test and one-day cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, still lives in the city and plays regularly for its league-winning club side at the Brabourne Stadium.

Oval Maidan - South Mumbai

This is the place to watch local talent in action, set against a wonderful backdrop of imperial-era buildings. Something of a pecking order applies here: the further from the path cutting across the centre of the park you go, the better the wickets and the classier the games become. Pitches like these are where Sachin Tendulkar, cut his cricketing teeth.

Wankhede Stadium - Off Marine Drive

This 45,000-capacity stadium is where major test matches are hosted, amid an atmosphere as intense, raucous and intimidating for visiting teams as any in India.

5. Mamallapuram

Mamallapuram - Best Tourist Places in South India

A magnificent collection of eighth-century temples, set along the shore of the Bay of Bengal.

Mamallapuram

Scattered around the base of a colossal mound of boulders 58 km south of Chennai is the small seaside town and UNESCO World Heritage Site of Mamallapuram (formerly Mahabalipuram). From dawn till dusk, the rhythms of chisels chipping granite resound down its sandy lanes – evidence of a stone-carving tradition that has endured since this was a major port of the Pallava dynasty, between the fifth and ninth centuries.

It is only possible to speculate about the purpose of much of the boulder sculpture, but it appears that the friezes and shrines were not made for worship at all, but rather as showcases for the talents of local artists. Due in no small part to the maritime activities of the Pallavas, their style of art and architecture had wide-ranging influence, spreading from South India as far north as Ellora, as well as to Southeast Asia.

Mamallapuram monuments divide into four categories: open-air bas-reliefs, structured temples, man-made caves and rathas (“chariots” carved in situ from single boulders to resemble temples or the chariots used in temple processions). The famous bas-reliefs, Arjuna’s Penance and the Krishna Mandapa, adorn massive rocks near the centre of the village, while the beautiful Shore Temple, one of India’s most photographed monuments, presides over the beach.

Sixteen man-made caves and monolithic structures, in different stages of completion, are scattered through the area, but the most complete of the nine rathas are in a group, named after the five Pandava brothers of the Mahabharata.

Given the coexistence of so many stunning archeological remains with a long sandy beach, it was inevitable this would become a major destination for Western travellers, with the inevitable presence of Kashmiri emporia, beach hawkers, budget hotels and fish restaurants – and more recently hordes of Chennai-escapees descending at the weekends as well. The sandy hinterland and flat estuarine paddy fields around Mamallapuram also harbour a handful of sights well worth making forays from the coast to see. You can take any coastal bus between Mamallapuram and Chennai, or rent a moped for the day.

The Shore Temple

Includes Pancha Pandava rathas if visited on the same day With its unforgettable silhouette, visible for kilometres along the beach, Mamallapuram Shore Temple dates from the early eighth century and is considered to be the earliest stone-built temple in South India. Today, due to the combined forces of wind, salt and sand, much of the detailed carving has eroded, giving the whole temple a soft, rounded appearance.

The taller of the towers is raised above a cell that faces out to sea – don’t be surprised to see mischievous monkeys crouching inside. Approached from the west through two low-walled enclosures lined with small Nandi (bull) figures, the temple comprises two lingam shrines (one facing east, the other west), and a third shrine between them housing an image of the reclining Vishnu.

Recent excavations, revealing a tank containing a structured stone column thought to have been a lantern, and a large Varaha (boar incarnation of Vishnu) aligned with the Vishnu shrine, suggest that the area was sacred long before the Pallavas chose it as a temple site.

Arjuna’s Penance

Mamallapuram most celebrated bas-relief, Arjuna’s Penance (also referred to as the “Descent of the Ganges”), lies directly west of the bus stand behind the modern Talasayana Perumal Temple. The surface of this rock erupts with detailed carving, most notably endearing and naturalistic renditions of animals.

On the left-hand side, Arjuna, one of the Pandava brothers and a consummate archer, is shown standing on one leg. He is looking at the midday sun through a prism formed by his hands, meditating on Shiva, who is represented by a nearby statue fashioned by Arjuna himself. The Shiva Purana tells that Arjuna made the journey to a forest on the banks of the Ganges to do penance, in the hope that Shiva would part with his favourite weapon, the pashupatastra, a magic staff or arrow.

Shiva eventually materialized in the guise of Kirata, a wild forest dweller, and picked a fight with Arjuna over a boar they both claimed to have shot. Arjuna only realized he was dealing with the deity after his attempts to drub the wild man proved futile; narrowly escaping death at the playful hand of Shiva, he was finally rewarded with the weapon.

To the right of Arjuna, a natural cleft represents the Ganges, complete with nagas – water spirits in the form of cobras. You may well see sudden movements among the carved animals: lazing goats often join the permanent features.

 
Ganesha Ratha and Krishna’s Butter Ball

Just north of Arjuna’s Penance a path leads west and uphill to a single monolith, the Ganesha Ratha. Its image of Ganesh dates from this century; some say it was installed at the instigation of England’s King George V. The sculpture at one end, of a protecting demon with a tricorn headdress, is reminiscent of the Indus Valley Civilization’s 4000-year-old horned figure known as the “proto- Shiva”.

Further north up the hill, precipitously balanced on the top of a ridge, is a massive, natural, almost spherical boulder called Krishna’s Butter Ball. Picnickers and goats often rest in its perilous-looking shade. Varaha Mandapa II Cave On the hill behind Arjuna’s Penance, southwest of the Ganesha Ratha, is the Varaha Mandapa II Cave, whose entrance hall has two pillars with horned lion-bases and a cell flanked by two dwarapala, or guardians. One of four panels shows the boar-incarnation of Vishnu, who stands with one foot resting on the naga snake-king as he lifts a diminutive Prithvi – the Earth – from the primordial ocean.

Another is of Gajalakshmi, the goddess Lakshmi seated on a lotus being bathed by a pair of elephants. Trivikrama, the dwarf brahmin who becomes huge and bestrides the world in three steps to defeat the demon king Bali, is shown in another panel, and finally a four armed Durga is depicted in another.

The Krishna Mandapa

Immediately south of Arjuna’s Penance, the enormous bas-relief known as the Krishna Mandapa shows Krishna raising Mount Govardhana aloft in one hand. The sculptor’s original intention must have been for the rock above Krishna to represent the mountain, but the seventeenth-century Vijayanagar addition of a columned mandapa, or entrance hall, prevents a clear view of the carving. Krishna is also depicted seated milking a cow, and standing playing the flute. Other figures are gopas and gopis, the cowboys and -girls of his pastoral youth.

The lighthouses

Around 300m south of Arjuna’s Penance, at the highest point in an area of steep paths, unfinished temples, ruins, scampering monkeys and massive rocks, the New Lighthouse affords fine views east to the Shore Temple, and west across paddy fields and flat lands littered with rocks. Next to it, the Olakanesvara (“flame-eyed” Shiva), or Old Lighthouse Temple, used as a lighthouse until the early twentieth century, dates from the Rajasimha period (674–800 AD).

Mahishasuramardini Cave

Nestling between the two lighthouses is the Mahishasuramardini Cave, whose central image portrays Shiva and Parvati with the child Murugan seated on Parvati’s lap. Shiva’s right foot rests on the back of the bull Nandi, and Parvati sits casually, leaning on her left hand. On the left wall, beyond an empty cell, a panel depicts Vishnu reclining on the serpent, his attitude of repose contrasted with the weapon-brandishing demons, Madhu and Kaitabha. Other figures seek Vishnu’s permission to chase them.

Opposite, an intricately carved panel shows the eight-armed goddess Durga as Mahishasura Mardini, the “crusher” of the buffalo demon Mahishasura. The panel shows Durga riding a lion, in the midst of the struggle. Accompanied by dwarf ganas, she wields a bow and other weapons; Mahishasura, equipped with a club, can be seen to the right, in flight with fellow demons.

 
Government Sculpture Museum

The small Government Sculpture Museum, located on the main road south of the bus stand, has a rather motley collection of unlabelled Pallava sculpture found in and around Mamallapuram, some of it quite colourful and attractive.

Many of the best pieces stand on the front lawn, perfectly visible from the road. The building itself, though modern, is also appealing and resembles a temple more than a museum.

Pancha Pandava Rathas (Five Rathas)

Including the Shore Temple on the same day In a sandy compound 1.5km south of the village centre stands the stunning group of monoliths known as the Pancha Pandava Rathas, the five chariots of the Pandavas. Dating from the period of Narasimhavarman I (c.630–670 AD), they consist of five separate freestanding sculptures that imitate structured temples, plus some beautifully carved life-sized animals.

The “architecture” of the rathas reflects a variety of styles and stands almost as a model for much subsequent development in the southern style. Carving was always executed from top to bottom, enabling the artists to work on the upper parts with no fear of damaging anything below. Intriguingly, it’s thought that the rathas were never used for worship. The southernmost and tallest of the rathas, named after the eldest of the Pandavas, is the pyramidal Dharmaraja.

Set on a square base, the upper part comprises a series of diminishing storeys, each with a row of pavilions. Four corner blocks, each with two panels and standing figures, are broken up by two pillars and pilasters supported by squatting lions. Figures on the panels include Ardhanarishvara (Shiva and female consort in one figure), Brahma, the king Narasimhavarman I and Harihara (Shiva and Vishnu combined).

The central tier includes sculptures of Shiva Gangadhara and one of the earliest representations in Tamil Nadu of the dancing Shiva, Nataraja, who became all-important in the region. Alongside, the Bhima ratha, the largest of the group, is the least complete. Devoid of carved figures, the upper storeys, as in the Dharmaraja, feature false windows and repeated pavilion-shaped ornamentation.

The Arjuna and Draupadi rathas share a base. Behind the Arjuna, the most complete of the entire group and very similar to the Dharmaraja, stands a superb unfinished sculpture of Shiva’s bull Nandi. Draupadi is unique in terms of rock cut architecture, with a roof that appears to be based on a straw-thatched hut.

There’s an image of Durga inside, but the figure of her lion vehicle outside is aligned side-on and not facing the image, suggesting this was not a real temple. To the west, close to a life-sized carving of an elephant, stands the ratha named after the twin brothers Nakula and Sahadeva.

Tiger Cave

Main highway, 4km north of Mamallapuram • Daily sunrise–sunset • Free Set amid trees close to the sea, the extraordinary Tiger Cave contains a shrine to Durga, approached by a flight of steps that passes two subsidiary cells. Following the line of an irregularly shaped rock, the cave is remarkable for its elaborate exterior, which features multiple lion-heads surrounding the entrance to the main cell. If you sit for long enough, the section on the left with seated figures in niches above two elephants begins to resemble an enormous owl.

Crocodile Bank

The Crocodile Bank at Vadanemmeli was set up in 1976 by the American zoologist Romulus Whit taker to protect and breed indigenous crocodiles. The Bank has been so successful (from fifteen crocs to five thousand in the first fifteen years) that its remit now extends to saving endangered species, such as turtles and lizards, from around the world.

Low-walled enclosures in its garden compound house hundreds of inscrutable crocodiles, soaking in ponds or sunning themselves on the banks. Breeds include the fish-eating, knobbly-nosed gharial, and the world’s largest species, the saltwater Crocodylus porosus, which can grow to 8m in length. There are feeding demonstrations at 11.30am, 12.30pm, 4.30pm and 5.30pm on Sundays. The temptation to take photos is tempered by the sight of those hungry saurians clambering over each other to snap up the chopped flesh, within centimetres of the top of the wall. Another attraction is the weekend Night Safari, when the crocodiles are far more active, which has to be booked at least 48 hours in advance.

Another important field of work is conducted with the collaboration of local Irula people, whose traditional expertise is with snakes. Cobras are brought to the bank for venom collection, to be used in the treatment of snakebites. Elsewhere, snakes are repeatedly “milked” until they die, but here only a limited amount is taken from each snake, enabling them to return to the wild. To visit this section costs an extra ₹5.

Dakshinachitra

Occupying a patch of sand dunes midway between Chennai and Mamallapuram, Dakshinachitra, literally “Vision of the South”, is one of India’s best conceived folk museums, devoted to the rich architectural and artistic heritage of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Set up by the Chennai Craft Foundation, the museum exposes visitors to many disappearing traditions of the region, which you might otherwise not be aware of, from tribal fertility cults and Ayyanar field deities to pottery and leather shadow-puppets.

A selection of traditional buildings from across peninsular India has been painstakingly reconstructed using original materials. Exhibitions attached to them convey the environmental and cultural diversity of the South, most graphically expressed in a wonderful textile collection featuring antique silk and cotton saris from various castes and regions. Snacks are available on site.

 
Conclusion

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