Where to Stay in Kanchipuram: 3 Hotels, Ranked

The Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation's own hotel in the town — the state-run option, of the kind TTDC keeps at most of the pilgrimage centres. It stands on Railway Road out to the north-east, 1.23 km from the bus stand by a routed walk, and the useful fact about it is what it is next to: 257 metres by footpath from Kanchipuram East station, the town's original railway station, which is why local directions still place it opposite the old station. Rooms are the usual TTDC pattern of plain twin-bed air-conditioned and non-air-conditioned units. ⚠ We could not read a current room count, tariff or facility list on TTDC's own booking portal and would rather say so than repeat an aggregator's figures. Book through ttdconline.com and confirm at the counter.

A small guest house on Kamakshi Amman Sannadhi Street, 622 metres north of the bus stand by a routed walk and about two hundred metres from the Kamakshi Amman temple — which is the street a great many pilgrims want to be on. OpenStreetMap carries a phone number (9092808882) and an Instagram page rather than a website, which is a fair description of the scale of the place. ⚠ We have found no independent page for it, no published tariff and no room count. Treat it as a walk-in-and-ask lodge by the temple rather than something to book ahead sight-unseen.

The largest and most conventional hotel in the town, on Gandhi Road about a kilometre south of the bus stand — 1.06 km by a routed walk. GRT's own page describes 30-odd rooms: three Standard at 160 sq ft and twenty-nine Deluxe at 161 sq ft, with a choice of queen or twin beds, plus a multi-cuisine restaurant, two banquet halls and an in-house gym, and the group lists the property as pet-friendly. Note that GRT markets it as a hotel near the Kamakshi temple; the temple is on the far side of the bus stand from here, so read that as the same town rather than the same street. We have not stayed. Everything above is from the hotel's own website rather than a review aggregator, and we publish no rates because the hotel prices its own rooms.