Day 1 — Arrive Trichy: Srirangam & Rockfort

We collect you at Tiruchirappalli airport, railway station or hotel. Trichy is central enough that most people reach it easily by train from Chennai or Madurai.

Srirangam in the late afternoon, which is when the light is best and the heat has gone off the stone. The Ranganathaswamy temple covers 156 acres inside seven concentric walls, and the outer enclosures are a living town — shops, houses, people going about their day. You walk inward through the gopurams, and each wall takes you further from the traffic and closer to silence. The Rajagopuram at the southern entrance is 72 metres and among the tallest temple towers in Asia.

Then the Rockfort at sunset — 437 steps cut into an 83-million-year-old outcrop in the middle of the city, with the Ucchi Pillayar temple at the top and a view over the Kaveri, Srirangam and the whole plain. The climb is steep but the steps are wide and shallow, and it takes most people twenty-five minutes at an unhurried pace.

Day 2 — Trichy to Thanjavur & Brihadeeswarar Temple

An easy morning drive east along the Kaveri delta. You check into your hotel in Thanjavur and stay there for the rest of the trip.

The Brihadeeswarar temple, or Big Temple, was finished in 1010 AD by Rajaraja Chola and it is still the single most impressive building in South India. The vimana above the sanctum rises 66 metres and is topped by a single granite block weighing around 80 tonnes — how it was raised is still argued about. The Nandi in the courtyard is carved from one stone, six metres long. The inscriptions running around the base are a complete administrative record of the temple’s endowments, which is why historians care about it as much as architects do.

Allow two to three hours, and go late in the afternoon when the granite turns gold and the courtyard fills with people rather than tour groups.

In the morning or the following day, the Thanjavur Maratha Palace — a rambling complex with the Durbar Hall, the bell tower, an art gallery holding some of the finest Chola bronzes anywhere, and the Saraswathi Mahal Library, one of the oldest working libraries in Asia with about 49,000 palm-leaf and paper manuscripts.

Day 3 — Darasuram, Kumbakonam & Swamimalai Bronze Casting

An hour north-east to Darasuram and the Airavatesvara temple, the second of the three UNESCO Chola sites and the one most people have never heard of. It is smaller than Thanjavur and far more finely carved — the front mandapam is built as a stone chariot drawn by horses, and there is a flight of steps that produces different musical notes when struck, which the guides will demonstrate and which is genuinely surprising. It is usually almost empty.

Then Kumbakonam, a temple town of around twenty temples in a few square kilometres, built around the Mahamaham tank where a bathing festival draws millions once every twelve years. The Sarangapani and Kumbeshwarar temples are the two to see if you want two rather than twenty.

In the afternoon, Swamimalai — a village where bronze icons have been cast by the same families for about a thousand years, using the lost-wax method the Cholas used. A wax model is made, coated in delta clay, fired so the wax runs out, and filled with molten bronze. The mould is broken to release the icon, so every piece is unique. Swamimalai bronzes carry a Geographical Indication tag, and watching the process is the most memorable half hour of this trip for a great many people.

Day 4 — Gangaikonda Cholapuram Chola Temple Day Trip

An hour and a half north to the third UNESCO site, and the reason to take this itinerary rather than a standard temple circuit.

After Rajendra Chola’s campaign north to the Ganges around 1023 AD he built a new capital and named it “the town of the Chola who took the Ganges”. The city is gone — there is farmland where it stood — but the temple remains, with a vimana of 55 metres, a Nandi, and carving that many art historians consider finer than Thanjavur’s even if the scale is smaller.

You will very likely have it almost to yourself. There is no queue, no crowd and very little infrastructure, and that is exactly the point.

Back to Thanjavur in the afternoon. If you have energy, the Thanjavur art gallery in the palace complex holds a collection of Chola bronzes worth an hour on its own, and the town is known for Tanjore painting — gold leaf on board, made here since the Maratha period, and sold in workshops where you can watch it being done.

Day 5 — Thanjavur to Trichy Departure

A slow morning, then back west to Tiruchirappalli for your flight or train. Allow three hours before a domestic departure.

If your train or flight is late in the day, we can add the Thiruvanaikaval temple near Srirangam on the way — one of the five Pancha Bhoota Sthalams, representing the element of water, with a spring in the inner sanctum that never dries.