Pandemic travel can be challenging; So stop by instead, and explore the city of Chennai, which wears many badges on its sleeve: the seat of culture, the center of medicine – the first city in modern India
Chennai has enough nooks and crannies to create its own story even for the natives. There are monuments, museums and monuments to visit.
Pack Picnic Hampers, Find More Madras Nala Madras,
day 1
at 9 am: Leave at the crack of dawn for Sadras, the Dutch fort, near Kalpakkam. In true monsoon light, the fort looks like a fading snapshot of colonial India. A gate with spikes at the entrance to this ASI monument, with a carved tomb of Dutch sailors buried between 1620 and 1769, is guarded by a cannon. Skulls and crossbones, a ship with billowing sails, and a man of war are carved in stone.
A battlefield of tunnels with clean sand, and dining and dancing halls lead to moss-lined steps – you see the Bay of Bengal from where the British bombed this fort and captured it in 1854.
11.30 am: Back in Chennai, take a trip to Taramani, which is a hub of education with institutions like the Rosa Muttiah Research Library. It is a wealth of material on the humanities and social sciences, compiled over 200 years. The personal collection of Rosa Muttiah, once a signboard artist who fell in love with old books, the library houses some of the best Tamil books, the oldest being published in 1804.
Afternoon: Stop at Santhome Basilica, a Gothic church with spectacular stained-glass panels, one of three churches in the world built over the tomb of an apostle of Christ, and Santhome’s old garden houses from the Portuguese era Gawk, decent but fuzz at the edges. Down the road is the Kapaleeswarar Temple, located on streets filled with an aura of jasmine and filter coffee.
12.30 p.m: Drive past the classical-style DGP’s office, the University Senate and the War Memorial to reach Fort St. George. This is where modern India was founded when the fort was completed in 1644 and from where the Union Jack was hoisted across Asia., City historian Sriram V suggests that you spend two hours to explore the 24 important points in the fort. St Mary’s, the oldest Anglican church east of Suez, hosts an armistice service every second Sunday of November to honor World War I veterans with its grand pipe organ.
I travel faster at the Fort Museum than HG Wells’ Time Machine, its sprawling wood-floored galleries that hold memorabilia from the Raj and newly-independent India. The Fort Museum, built in 1795, once housed the Madras Bank and is disabled-friendly, with louvre windows open to coins, paintings and offbeat stories such as the cage of Captain Philip Anstruther in which he was held captive on his knees. Also, visit King’s Barracks, the home of Clive and the home of the Duke of Wellington.
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2.30 PM: The Madras High Court complex was completed in 1892 by Henry Irwin. The Indo-Saracenic structure is home to two of the city’s earliest lighthouses, one a Doric column of Pallavaram granite, the other overlooking the main building 32 miles into the sea. The bastions hang high above the city’s mist and were first seen by many of Madras when they arrived by Masula boats. It also survived two world wars.
A gallery adorned with Minton tiles and paintings leads to a courtroom where the accused make their presence known through a trap door in the floor. Other intriguing cases and valuable law documents are in the High Court Museum.
3.30 PM: Wander past the Armenian Church in Mannady, a block-a-block with migrants for nearly 200 years. The air is thick with Telugu, Marwari and Gujarati. The drive up to Royapuram, once a haven for Anglo-Indians, is now remembered only among the names that are strewn over the defaced flag of Bishop Cory’s school.
In addition, the Communicable Diseases Hospital stands on the site of the Emigration Depot, which used to house indentured laborers who left for places as far away as Fiji to fund the Raj. The stairs to Madi Ponga are shaded with bougainvillea. Here is the northern boundary wall of the once walled city of Madras, built in 1772.
second day
at 9 am: Drive the car down Poonamallee High Road with views across Madras Medical College, Central Station, Siddiqui Sarai, Victoria Hall and Ripon Building, Government College of Fine Arts, St Andrews Kirk and Egmore Railway Station and up to Tamil Nadu Police Museum on Pantheon Road move. ,
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A penny used by a beat constable is lined with a bullet-proof SUV. Inside, country-made bombs, pistols and modern weapons are accompanied by stories of sensational crimes.
Further down the road, the red-bricked Government Museum, Chennai has the largest collection of Roman antiquities outside Europe. Sujatha Shankar, Convener, INTACH, Chennai Chapter, recommends visiting the Bronze Gallery and Amaravati sculptures. It was here that Orientalist Edward Balfour thought up the idea for the city’s first zoo.
at 2 pm: It is full steam next to the Rail Museum, its parks full of locomotives and carriages of iconic trains such as the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. One of the museum’s charming staff swings the buggy closer to me so that I can take a look at its Caledonian blue structure.
The engine of the Himalayan Darjeeling Railway is painted in Caledonian blue at the Chennai Rail Museum. photo Credit: Deepa Sikander
The galleries are filled with miniatures that take you back to the hiss of hot steam and the loud whiff of brass whistles when the train snakes around a turn. There are photographs of the long journey of the railways since the first train ran from Bombay to Thane in 1853. There are also photographs of Swiss engineers who gave the first technology to the Integral Coach Factory, and were visited by stalwarts such as Leonid Brezhnev and Queen Elizabeth II. ICF. Don’t miss that Indian classic – the old world charm of cutlery from the Railway Waiting Room.
4 pm: At the Madras War Cemetery where headstones commemorate men and women who died in both world wars, stop at the Stone of Remembrance with the words ‘Der nem Livath for Evermore’, chosen by Rudyard Kipling to venerate the dead of the Empire Was.
Then, as the long drawn twilight of the east falls over the city, drive up to St. Thomas Mt. There is a church on one side and a panoramic view of Chennai on the other side at dusk.
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