Our First Foray into incredible Tamilnadu : A 14 day road trip
Planning for Our upcoming Tamilnadu 2020 : A holiday starts way before and well before it actually starts. The planning, the choices, the decisions , the excitement, the shopping, packing, reading up, hours of YouTube and googling and the whole nine yards well before you board your first flight / train or whatever is what pushes the adrenaline to a high and builds the anticipation that is the heart of any upcoming holiday.
Tamilnadu, Finally : There are a ton of things in my travel bucket list. To be precise, I have a ton of buckets too. Tamilnadu has been in there for a while and its clamour for attention has only gone strident over time. So, we decided to start out travels in 2020 with 2 week toad trip in Tamilnadu.
What is Tamilnadu about? : As I started reading up in preparation, I quickly realised that Tamilnadu does not fit a simple descriptor nor can it be covered in 2 weeks.
I would be ridiculously silly to think it can be.
It is replete with a humongous amount of History, The rise and fall of spectacular dynasties at playa various times (Pandya, Chera, Chola, Pallava, Hoysala ,Vijayanagara, Maratha), various ages and phases the land went through (pre historic, Sangam era,The Dark Ages, The revival and the modern day), Art, Music, Architecture, Temples and faith, Handicraft and artisans, Urban myths and some serious mythology, Food, Sculpture and incredible amount of ancient technology and creativity, Paleo anthropology ... the list goes on.
Conclusion : we need to visit Tamilnadu several times. This will be just the first visit - a sampler, if you will.
Where do we go? : Wisdom got the better of ambition and we decided on a road trip starting in Chennai and covering only 11 of the initial shortlist of 23 places: Kanchi, Mahabalipuram, Thiruvannamalai, Pondichery, Chidambaram, Kumbhakonam, Tanjore, Trichy, Karaikkudi, Rameswaram and Madhurai. That is a lot, but we will be back and it was necessary to touch the key bases on the first trip while we will not cover any of those places exhaustively. Future travels shall cover only 2-3 places at a time.
When : January. I am aspirational and not adventurous. I will not do a road trip in TN in any months other than December or January. The weather rest of the year is hot or hotter or humid.
Logistics : Rent a comfortable van (creature comforts can not die on the altar of curiosity and learning) and a very knowledgeable guide to accompany us through the trip.Kala would be our guide for the travel. We decided to work with the awesome Vish and his Footprints holidays ( in Chennai) to help curate the holiday
Stay : Where we stay is super critical and is a big part of the experience. Vish managed to find for us some really nice Heritage Stay places.
So, Vimala my wife, my sister and brother in law are all set to kick off this holiday on 13thJanuary,2020.
I will share more as we go... day to day, place to place, experience to experience ..