Places to Visit in Sripuram

One city, two landmarks that could hardly be less alike: a gleaming modern temple sheathed in gold, and a squat granite fort that once shook the East India Company.

From Gingee, the “Troy of the East”, to the Danish walls of Dansborg — how Tamil Nadu’s hill citadels and coastal castles trace the making of a colonial empire.

Pair the granite fort and gilded temple of Vellore with the ancient temple town of Kanchipuram on an easy two-day loop from Chennai or Bengaluru.

A jewel-box of Vijayanagara stone inside the granite walls of Vellore Fort — its deity carried into exile, then brought quietly home one March morning in 1981.