Travel: India, Chennai and Puducherry

Beautiful view of colorful gopura in the Hindu Kapaleeshwarar Temple,chennai, Tamil Nadu, South India. Getty/iStock photo

The coastal strip southwards from the city of Chennai (former Madras) is not familiar territory for visitors when compared with places like Goa and Rajasthan, which means it is just waiting to be explored and enjoyed. Your starting point is likely to be Chennai, and there is an exceptional resort on the road south to Puducherry (former Pondicherry), a little bastion of Gallic culture where water buffaloes graze outside bakeries selling croissants, brioche and pain au chocolat.

But first Chennai, the fourth largest city in India with a population exceeding seven million. A day or two here at the beginning of your trip gives you time to acclimatise – to the traffic as much as the climate – and do a little shopping and sightseeing. It’s a noisy city, where the traffic is insanely indifferent to lane discipline and yet somehow works – perhaps due to the watchful eyes of Vishnu, to whom hundreds of carved and colourful figures are dedicated in the city’s Hindu temples.

A good place to stay is Courtyard by Marriott, centrally located and next to a station on the soon to be completed metro line from the airport. Arriving here in the morning from an overnight Jet Airways flight, the best masala dosa I’ve ever eaten was prepared in front of me at the breakfast counter. The hotel is close to Pondy Bazaar, a local shopping area where tiny shops spread out on to the street and sell inexpensive clothes, bags, block-printed cotton sheets and strange kitchen implements.

For more luxurious accommodation, the Crowne Plaza Chennai Adyar Park is in a relatively quiet part of town and manages to provide friendly personal service despite its large size. Occupying a modern tower block, it offers great rooftop views and comfortable bedrooms, and you are spoiled for choice in the number of food and drink outlets. The best of them is Dashkin, for wonderful south Indian thalis and live traditional music, and On the Rocks, where you get to cook your own food on hot stones and wear a chef’s hat. With a serene pool, gym and spa, plus modern shopping centres nearby, this is a good place to unwind from the raging traffic of the city.

But the real reason for this trip is Puducherry. Two hours or so on an air-conditioned bus brings you to this unique destination, a city with a split personality: a busy Tamil business area and an older French quarter. The neighbourhood which was the centre of French rule – no British Raj here – has quiet, tree-lined streets built in a grid system, making orientation a breeze, and a pedestrianised promenade that brings blessed relief from hooting tuk-tuks.

Very few people actually live in the French quarter; it’s now given over to hotels, public offices and buildings (all painted grey) owned by a local ashram. Time can be whiled away in craft shops, taking care of your Christmas shopping, and joining a Storytrails walking tour in the cool of the evening. Their French Connection tour tells the history of Puducherry from its establishment as a Roman trading post to its three centuries of colonial rule before independence finally came in 1954 (seven years after the rest of India).

Hotels here have fewer than 20 rooms, either in converted colonial buildings or, like Palais de Mahe, entirely reconstructed in the French style with colonnaded verandas around a central courtyard filled with a little garden and a lap pool. Simple, high ceilinged rooms create a cool atmosphere; there’s a rooftop restaurant and a spa offering Ayurvedic massages.

Nearby and closer to the seafront is Villa Shanti, a modern series of rooms built around an original colonial building. Its central courtyard, filled with tall palm trees, serves as its restaurant while the contemporary-style bedrooms have plain, polished concrete floors and walls set with mosaics and hand-painted designs.

Just outside the French quarter is Maison Perumal, a lovely abode with rooms built around two leafy courtyards. Its restaurant offers traditional Tamil dishes which are put up on a blackboard each morning after staff return from the local market. Cycle tours are available here, as are excursions to Auroville, an international community associated with Puducherry’s ashram, where spiritually-minded residents have names like Pure Soul and Fertility.

Auroville’s quality craft products are on sale at La Boutique in Nehru St in the Tamil quarter: bags, fabrics, souvenirs, accessories and home items like attractive placemats using pressed flowers. In the French quarter, De Craft in Bazaar St Laurent is a little Aladdin’s cave where you can winkle out assorted items for home decoration.

Sooner or later in India it will be time for a complete break with the teeming vehicular and human traffic. The best escape route between Puducherry and Chennai is to a resort hotel at the seaside town of Mahabalipuram. The location is a Unesco World Heritage site due to a profusion of ancient sculptures and temples. It has a grand roaring beach with surfing schools and the impressive InterContinental Resort. Beautifully designed, with a stark exterior and entrance giving way to softer water lily-strewn ponds, it’s a centre of stillness in frenetically busy India.

Back in Chennai, the Hilton Chennai is a useful place to stay; deservedly popular with seasoned travellers who appreciate its location, 15 minutes from the airport, and its south Indian restaurant, Est. A celebratory splurge can be enjoyed feasting at the Leela Palace’s Sunday brunch: the setting is opulent and the buffet enormous.

FACTFILE

Fly to Chennai with Jet Airways (www. jetairways.com) via Delhi from Heathrow or, connecting in Amsterdam, from Glasgow; flights are daily and prices start at £473.

Buses to Mahabalipuram and Puducherry (£2.50 one way) leave from Chennai’s central bus station regularly and can be booked online at http://www.busindia.com/PRTC-Pondicherry-Online-Booking.jsp# or in advance at the station.

Rooms at Courtyard by Marriott (www.marriott.co.uk ) cost from £68; at The Crowne Plaza Chennai Adyar Park (www.crowneplaza.com ) from £75; at Hilton Chennai (www.hilton.com ) from £100; Sunday brunch at Leela Palace is £39 (£51 with unlimited champagne).

In Puducherry, rooms at Villa Shanti (www.lavillashanti.com) cost from £84; at Palais de Mahe (www.cghearth.com/palaisdemahe) and Maison Perumal (www.cghearth.com/maison-perumal) they cost £90 in high season. A Storytrails tour (https://storytrails.in/) costs £13.

Rooms at the InterContinenatal Mahabalipuram (www.intercontinental.com/chennai) cost from £90.