The Golden Chariot - Jewels of the South

Once a sleepy regional capital, Bengaluru (previously Bangalore) is the go-ahead, trend-setting capital of Karnataka state. As the home of India’s own Silicon Valley, the city has been at the forefront of the country’s IT revolution for the past two decades or more, and has a noticeably upbeat feel, with a hi-rise skyline of glass-sided towers to match.  Traces of Bengaluru’s pre-colonial past include a scattering of splendid medieval temples, among them the 800-year-old Dharmarayaswamy near the centre.

Mysore, the former capital of the Wadiyar Rajas, is by far Karnataka’s most popular visitor attraction. Unlike Bengaluru, the city seems to have been largely bypassed by the dotcom revolution and retains plenty of traditional charm, particularly in its markets, which serve as important centres for the trade in sandalwood, incense and hand-woven silk. The stand-out sight here, though, is the Maharaja’s Palace – a lavish, fairytale confection in the quintessentially Raj-era Indo-Saracenic style. Clad in 18-carat gold, hundreds of Mughal-style domes and Rajasthani cupolas crown the complex, which is illuminated every Sunday with 100,000 electric bulbs. It was built in 1912 on the site of an old wooden palace and boasts a sumptuous interior, including the famous ‘Thousand Pillar Hall’.

Much of its interiors were imported from different parts of the world, including England, which provided the vast brass gates that lead directly into the central courtyard from the gardens.  

Thousands of years before the British first landed on the Coromandel Coast, merchants’ ships were setting sail from a city further south to ports as far afield as the Malacca Straits. Known as Mahabalipuram (or Mamallapuram), the town was praised by both Periplus and Ptolemy for its wealth and sophistication. Marco Polo enthused about the ‘Seven Great Pagodas’ that rose from its shore, a skyline hewn from solid granite by the Pallava Dynasty in the 7th century AD.

Numerous vestiges of this golden era survive amid the giant humpback boulders looming above the modern village. Ranging from shrines sculpted in the form of rathas (temple chariots), to mandapas (cave sanctuaries) and giant open-air reliefs, they include the world-famous Shore Temple.

Completed in 1010AD, Thanjavur’s great Chola shrine recently celebrated its 1000th birthday. Its construction marked the apogee of Chola power and reflects the engineering prowess and artistic genius of the period. The shrine’s defining feature is a giant, richly carved sanctuary tower. Measuring 61m (200ft) from base to crown, the vimana is capped with an 80-tonne dome of solid granite that required a 7-mile-long ramp and team of elephants to install.

Chettinad’s caste of traders and moneylenders, the Nattukotai Chettiyars, grew wealthy in the 19th century, when they amassed vast fortunes in the British colonies of Burma, Ceylon and Indochina. The scale and sophistication of the mansions they built back in their homeland stand as testaments both to their business acumen and changing fashions in architecture. While outwardly following the European trends of their day, the houses adopted more familiar, traditional designs indoors.

For centuries the hub of India’s spice and tea trade, Fort Cochin occupies the northern tip of a peninsula dividing the mouth of the Vembanad Lake from the Arabian Sea. Its low-rise, red-tiled skyline bears the imprint of its former colonial residents: Lusitanian chapels, Jewish synagogues, Dutch burghers’ houses, Armenian mansions, and British bungalows and godowns (warehouses) all survive in the Fort’s grid of narrow lanes – the largest collection of early colonial buildings in Asia

Until the 1980s, large barges made of oiled jackwood and canopies of plaited palm leaves were used throughout the Kuttinad region of Kerala to transport rice and other produce through the backwaters. Now, trucks do the haulage work, but the boats – known as Kettu Vallam in Malayali – have been put to more lucrative uses, taking visitors on cruises around the canals, rivers and lagoons of this fascinating region, where most of the population still live in island villages.

One thing that changes little over time, is everyday life in the backwaters. Villagers still bathe and wash their clothes from steps on the riverbanks, and travel around in canoes. Floating duck farms with thousands of birds being herded by a man paddling a dugout are a common sight, as are locals fishing for crab and the other backwater delicacies that make Kuttinadi cuisine one of the most varied and succulent in India.

Known as ‘The Garden City’ in British times, Bengaluru also has some pleasant parks where you can escape the traffic. Created in 1760 by Sultan Haider Ali and later enlarged by experts from Kew, the Mughal-inspired Lalbagh Botanical Gardens hosts regular flower shows in its giant glass house, modelled on London’s Crystal Palace.