Places to Visit in Srirangam

On an island between two rivers stands a temple so large you enter it like a walled city — seven enclosures deep, guarded by the tallest gopuram in Asia, built around a god who lies asleep.

One of Tamil Nadu’s busiest Amman temples — the Srirangam legend, the sand-and-herb goddess, and the flower, lamp and turmeric offerings that fill her sanctum.

The Pancha Bhoota Sthalam of water near Trichy, where a spring wells up beneath the lingam and an old legend of an elephant and a spider gave the temple its name.

An abrupt bluff of near-primordial rock, crowned by two temples and wrapped in legend — the story of Trichy’s Rockfort and the stairway to Ucchi Pillayar.

Two days at the geographic heart of Tamil Nadu — the Rockfort rising over the old city, then the vast Srirangam temple island and its water-element neighbour at Thiruvanaikaval.

A low wall of unhewn stone across the Kaveri, traditionally credited to Karikala Chola, has steered the river into the rice country of the delta for close to two thousand years — and still does.

Five white minarets rise over a fishing town north of Nagapattinam. This is Nagore Dargah — a four-century-old Sufi shrine where Hindus and Muslims have long worshipped side by side.

From the seaside caves of Mahabalipuram to the frescoed Jain shelter at Sittanavasal, follow Tamil Nadu’s temples that were not built but carved out of living rock.