Places to Visit in Pichavaram

Between two estuaries near Chidambaram lies a labyrinth of tidal creeks and root-bound islets — a mangrove forest you enter only by boat.

In a golden hall at Chidambaram, Shiva dances the universe into being — and behind a curtain nearby lies nothing at all. That emptiness is the point.

A vast pale sweep of sand south of Cuddalore — often called one of India’s longest beaches — with the ruins of Fort St David, an old fishing harbour and the Pichavaram mangroves close by.

A few overgrown walls near Cuddalore are almost all that remain of Fort St David — once the English Company’s coastal stronghold against French Pondicherry, and a place the young Robert Clive knew well.

Two unhurried days on the Coromandel coast — the cosmic dance of Shiva at Chidambaram, then a maze of mangrove waterways at Pichavaram, finishing on one of Tamil Nadu’s longest beaches.