The Rough Guide to South India

760 Pages·2004·36.622 MB·English

by  Rough Guides

"Rough Guides are eonsistently readable, informed and,
most crueially, reliable." Bill Bryson
f'^~
• Mumbai r
(Bombay) J
r * Hyderabad Vishakhapatnarr
^ Bijapur;^ Vijayawada*
Hampi ^ ANDHRA
Panjim * r PRADESH
GOA u
Tirupati
\karhataka"
Bangalore, I) Chennai
(Madras)
Mangalore*^ Mysore
Kanchipuram
Tiruchirapalii
■pianjavur'
S’ ‘ ke^la;, Madurai
Lakshadweep Kochi* /' •
, r-^
KollamT^ • ( y
Thiruvananthapuram { INDIAN
Kanniyakumari . SRI
ARABIAN SBA ; LANKA
About this book
Rough Guides are designed to be good to read
and easy to use.
The colour section introduces South India, with
suggestions for when to go and what not to miss,
followed by a list of contents. Then comes
basics, for pre-departure information, and other
practicalities.
The guide chapters cover the region in depth,
each starting with a highlights panel and a map to
help plan your route.
The contexts section fills you in on history,
religions, art and architecture, wildlife and dance,
plus the best books, while the language section
gives you all you need to get by.
This third edition published November 2003.
Accommodation price codes
All accommodation prices in this book have been categorized na
ar
using the price codes below. The prices given are for a double ok
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room, and all taxes are Included. In the case of dorms, we give
the price in rupees. More details on p.45.
O up to Rsl 50 Q Rsl 50-300 O Rs300-500
O
Rs500-700 O RS700-1000 O Rsl000-1500
O Rsl 500-2000 O RS2000-3000 © Rs3000 upwards
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Introduction to U
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South India T
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Though its borders are uncertain, there’s no doubt that
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South India, the tapering tropical half of this mighty
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peninsula, differs radicaliy from the landlocked north. N

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Stepping off a winter flight from foggy Delhi into the O

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glasshouse humidity of Chennai or Thiruvananthapuram O

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(Trivandrum), you enter a world far removed from the muted
hues of the great Indian river plains, in the south, the
coconut groves seem a deeper green and the rice paddies
positively luminescent, the faces are a darker brown and
the vermilion caste marks smeared over them arrestingly
red. The region’s heavy rainfall means that lush paddy
fields and palm groves patchwork the volcanic soils during
all but the hottest months. But under a sun whose rays feel
concentrated by a giant magnifying glass, the ubiquitous
colours of South India - of silk saris, shimmering classical
dance costumes, roadside political posters and frangipani
flowers - radiate with a life of their own.
South India’s three mightiest rivers - the Godavari,
the Krishna and the Kaveri — and their countless
tributaries, flow east across a low, fertile alluvial basin
that has been inhabited as long as anywhere in the
subcontinent. Separated from the prehistoric Indus
valley civilizations of the northwest by tracts ot
barren hills, the earliest South Indian societies are
thought to have evolved independently of their
northern cousins. Periodic invasions left their marks
on the territory referred to in some of India’s oldest ■
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Masala movies h
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IN Emblematic of modern India at its vur
T most highly charged and lurid are
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D the huge, hand-painted hoardings
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C that tower over city intersections.
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IO Featuring blood-splattered macho
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men, curvaceous heroines in
W various states of distress (and
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E undress), chubby, bulging-eyed
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E bad guys and explosions a-plenty,

T inscriptions as Dravidadesa, “Land of
O they give you a pretty good taste of

G the Dravidians”. But neither the
O the kind of movies churned out by

| the record-beating film industries Moghuls, Portuguese, French nor
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H of Mumbai and Chennai. In either British were ever fully able to subju¬
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N Hindi or Tamil, all follow formulaic gate the south. As a result, traditions,

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O hero-gets-the-girl plots, languages and ways of life have

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O interrupted at frequent intervals by endured intact here for more than two

sweeping song-and-dance thousand years — a fact that lends to
sequences whose ubiquitous any journey into the region a unique
soundtracks crackle out of resonance.
cassette machines from Kashmir The persistence of a distinctly
to Kerala. Catch the latest box- Dravidian culture in part accounts for
office smash at one of the big-city
the regionalism that has increasingly
cinema houses, primed by our
dominated the political and cultural
background accounts on
life of the South since Independence
“Bollywood” (p.123) and the Tamil
in 1947. With the exception of Goa, a
film industry (p.422).
former Portuguese colony, and the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the
borders of the states covered in this
book — Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu
and Andhra Pradesh — were drawn
along linguistic lines. Each state boasts
its own distinctive styles of music,
dance, architecture and cuisine, not to
mention religious cults and dress.
Moreover, attempts by New Delhi to
homogenize the country by imposing
Hindi, the most widely spoken
language in the North, as the medium
of education and government, have
consistently met with resistance, stim¬
ulating support for the regional parties
whose larger-than-life leaders beam munificently from giant hoardings in
every major town and city. I
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More pervasive even than the power of politics in South India is the
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influence of religion, which, despite the country’s resolutely secular O
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constitution, still permeates every aspect of life. Of the four major faiths, U
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Hinduism is by far the most prevalent, practised by around eighty percent TI
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of the population. If the sacred peaks of the Himalayas are Hinduism’s N

head, and the Ganges its main artery, then the temple complexes of the W
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South are its spiritual heart and soul. Soaring high above every urban sky¬ E
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line, their colossal towers are emblematic of the awe with which the deities E

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enshrined inside them have been held for centuries. Some, like the sea- O

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washed temple at Tiruchendur in Tamil Nadu, are thought to be as old as O

human speech itself; others, such as the Sabarimala forest shrine in Kerala |
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are less ancient, but attract greater numbers of pilgrims than even Mecca. H
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For foreign visitors, however, the most extraordinary of all have to be the
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colossal Chola shrines of Tamil Nadu. Joining the crowds that stream O

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through Madurai’s Meenakshi-Sundareshwar temple or Shri Rama- O

lingeshwara in Rameshwaram will take you to the very taproot of the |
world’s last surviving classical culture, some of whose hymns, prayers and
rites predate the Egyptian pyramids.
By comparison, Islam, South India’s second religion, is a fledgling faith,
first introduced by Arab traders along the coast in the twelfth century. Later,
offshoots of the Muslim dynasties that ruled the North carved out feudal
kingdoms beyond the Godavari, establishing a band of Islamic
culture across the middle of the Deccan plateau. Other elements in the
great South Indian melting pot include a dozen or more denominations of
Christianity, ranging from the ancient Syrian Orthodox7 believed to have
been introduced by the apostle St Thomas, to the Roman Catholicism of
Old Goa’s Portuguese Jesuits.The region also harbours sites sacred to Jains,
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Where to go
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R outh India’s boundaries vary according to whom you’re talking to:
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U while some regard the River Krishna, the upper limit of India’s last
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T Hindu empire, as the real north-south divide, others place the
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N subcontinent’s main cultural fault line at the River Godavari, or

i further north still, at the Vindhya Hills, the barrier of arid table-topped
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H mountains bounding the Ganges Basin. In this guide we’ve started with
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E Mumbai, a hot, congested city that is the arrival point for most interna¬

TO tional flights. Mumbai gets a pretty bad press, and most people pass straight

G through. But those who stay find themselves witness to the reality of
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modern-day India, from the deprivations of the city’s slum-dwellings to
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H the glitz and glamour of Bollywood movies.
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N The other principal gateway is Chennai, capital ot Tamil Nadu, in the

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O deep south, which is a slightly less stressful point of entry. Although it’s

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O another major metropolis bursting at the seams, hidden under its surface

| are artful gems such as regular public performances of classical music and
dance. With regular flights and ship departures to Port Blair, Chennai is also
the major springboard for the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago
ringed by coral reefs and crystal-clear seas, 1000km east of the mainland in
the Bay of Bengal.
Teyyattam
From late October to May, archaic ritual
dances known as teyyattam take place in
over 400 villages and temples along the
north Malabar coast. Performances often
last all night, and provide a spectacular
way of discovering the traditions that lie
at the heart of Kerala. Each community
nurtures an allegiance to a popular deity;
the body and expression of the dancer,
the theyyam, becomes a vessel for the deity to connect with their devotees.
According to tradition, a theyyam must come from a low-caste family, but
while they perform, their humble status is eliminated and social equality
reigns. The theyyam starts to learn the art when he is 9 years old and will,
for the next eight years, receive training in dance, martial arts and massage.
Some theyyam are required to dance deft steps whilst wearing a headdress
(mudi) almost twice their size; there are also particularly rare and dangerous
teyyattam where the dancer dons a headdress the height of a coconut tree.
For more on tracking down teyyattam, see p.400.
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The majority of visitors’ first stop after Chennai is Mamallapuram, an O

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ancient port littered with weatherworn sculpture sites, including the O

famous Shore temple. To get right off the beaten track you only have to |
head inland to Kanchipuram, whose innumerable Hindu shrines span the
golden age of the illustrious Chola kingdom, or to Tiruvannamalai,
where one of the region’s massive temple complexes rises dramatically
from the base of a sacred mountain, site of countless ashrams and medita¬
tion caves. Back on the coast, the former French colony of Pondicherry
retains a distinctly Gallic feel, particularly in its restaurants, where you can
order coq au viu and a bottle of Burgundy before a stroll along the prome¬
nade. The Kaveri (Cauvery) Delta, further south, harbours astonishing
crops of monuments, some of the most impressive of which are around
Thanjavur (Tanjore), the Cholas’ former capital, dominated by the awe¬
some Brihadishwara temple.You could profitably spend days exploring the
town’s watery hinterland, hunting out bronze-casting villages, crumbling
ruins and other forgotten sacred sites among the web of rivers and irriga¬
tion canals. Most travellers press on south to Madurai, the region’s most
atmospherically charged city, where the mighty Meenakshi-Sundareshwar
temple presides over a quintessentially Tamil .swirl of life.
The two other most compelling destinations in Tamil Nadu are the island
of Rameshwaram, whose main temple features a vast enclosure of
pillared corridors, and Kanniyakumari, the auspicious southernmost tip
of India, where the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea flow
together. The dark shadows visible on the horizon from here mark the start
of the southern and western Ghats, which stretch for more than
1000km in a virtually unbroken chain all the way to Mumbai, forming a
sheer barrier between Tamil Nadu and neighbouring Kerala. Covered in
immense forests and windswept grasslands, the mountains rise to the high¬
est peaks in peninsular India, with sides sculpted by tea terraces, coffee
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IN plantations and cardamom groves.The hill stations of Udhagamandalam
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IH (or Ooty, as it’s still better known) and Kodaikanal, established by India s
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D former colonial rulers as retreats from the summer heat of the plains, attract
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T hordes of Indian visitors in the run-up to the rains, but see plenty of for¬
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N eign tourist traffic during the winter, too.

{ Neighbouring Kerala’s appeal lies less in its religious monuments,
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H many of which remain off-limits to non-Hindus, than its infectiously
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E easy-going, tropical ambience. Covering a long thin coastal strip backed

TO by a steep wall of hills, this is the wettest and most densely populated

G state in the South. It is also the most distinctive, with a culture that sets
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| it squarely apart. Its ritualized theatre (Kathakali), faintly Southeast Asian
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H architecture and ubiquitous communist graffiti (Kerala was the first place
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N in the world to gain a democratically elected communist government)

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O are perhaps the most visual expressions of this difference. But spend a

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O couple of days exploring the spicy backstreets of old Kochi (Cochin),

| the jungles of the Cardamom Hills around the Periyar Wildlife Sanc¬
tuary or the hidden acjuatic world of the coastal backwaters, and you’ll
see why many travellers end up staying here a lot longer than they orig¬
inally intended. If you’re not pushed for time and find yourself crossing
northern Kerala during the winter, set aside a few days to search for
Teyyattam, a spectacular masked dance form unique to the villages
around Kannur.
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