Chennai, Mahabalipuram and Puducherry — The Coromandel Coast in Four Nights

Your driver meets you at Chennai airport or at your railway station and takes you to the hotel. If you arrive by mid-afternoon, the evening goes to Mylapore: the Kapaleeshwarar Temple and the streets around it, which are busy again in the evening, with San Thome Basilica close by if you would like to add it. Arrive late and the day is simply a transfer and a rest. Chennai traffic is heavy into the evening, so we keep this first outing to one quarter of the city.

Leave after breakfast and an unhurried look at the Marina seafront from the car, then take the East Coast Road south. Mahabalipuram is between 50 and 60 km from Chennai and we allow about an hour and a half, more with stops. DakshinaChitra, the heritage museum at Muttukadu, is an optional break and is closed on Tuesdays; Tiger Cave comes shortly before the town. After check-in and the midday heat, go to the Shore Temple for the late-afternoon light and walk the beach beside it.

An early start pays here. The monuments open at 6 am, so see the Five Rathas first, then Arjuna’s Penance, Krishna’s Butter Ball and the Varaha and Mahishamardini caves on the main hill, and return for a late breakfast. Puducherry is roughly 100 km further down the coast; we allow two to two and a half hours. The ruined fort at Alamparai is on the way if time allows. In the evening, walk the Promenade once the seafront road has been closed to traffic.

The morning is on foot in White Town — Rue Dumas, Rue Romain Rolland, the French War Memorial — and at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, whose main building is open to visitors from 8 to 11.30 am. After lunch the car takes you about 10 km north to Auroville. Passes for the Matrimandir viewing point are issued only to visitors in person at the Visitors Centre, so this is not something we can pre-arrange; the Inner Chamber is not part of the visit. If you prefer the sea, we swap in the boat to Paradise Beach.

After breakfast the car returns up the coast to Chennai. The territory’s government gives the distance to Chennai airport as about 135 km, and we plan on about three and a half hours; a railway station in the city centre takes longer because of traffic. Please book a flight or train from late afternoon onward and send us the ticket before you pay for it, so that we can set the morning departure against it when we quote.