The Chettinad tour from Chennai begins with a morning flight from Chennai to Trichy departing at 9:30 am, arriving at 11 am. A private air conditioned vehicle and your cultural guide are waiting at the airport.

Day 1 — Pudukottai and Chettinad

The drive from Trichy takes you through Pudukottai, the former princely state that served as the gateway to the Chettiyar heartland. Pudukottai passed through the hands of the Pandyas, Mutharaiyars, Thondaimans and finally the British, and its streets still carry the layered history of each period.

Sittanaval Cave is the first stop — a rock-cut Jain monastery from the 2nd century BC whose interior contains some of the finest ancient murals in India. The ceiling paintings, executed in vegetable and mineral dyes in the 7th century, are extraordinary in both their colour and their preservation. The images of lotus flowers, fish, geese and human figures in a tank scene have a freshness and naturalism that makes them feel surprisingly contemporary. But the most extraordinary feature of the cave is its acoustics — a mild hum in the interior resonates and amplifies in a way that was specifically engineered to aid the monks in their meditation, creating a standing wave that focuses the mind in a manner that is immediately perceptible even to a first-time visitor. Above the cave a steep path leads to 17 rock-cut beds used by Jain ascetics since the 3rd century BC, each one polished smooth and carved with a raised headrest from the living rock of the hilltop.

The Kudumiyanmalai Temple, built by the Cholas and renovated by the Pandyas in the 13th century, contains a main hall of a thousand pillars with sculptures of extraordinary quality. The Rati and Manmadha sculpture is considered a masterpiece of Pandya period carving, and the image of Shiva in a dancing pose in the same complex is among the finest in Tamil Nadu.

The overnight stay is in a Chettinad-style mansion — the most atmospheric accommodation available anywhere on the Chettinad tour from Chennai.

Day 2 — Forts, Mansions and Tiles

Tirumayyam Fort begins day two — a fortification built in 1687 AD by King Sethupathy Vijaya Ragunatha Thevar of Ramnad, its unusual ring design constructed with seven concentric walls surrounded by a broad moat. The fort played a significant role in the Polygar Wars of resistance against British rule and was later used by the British Army during World War II, giving it one of the most diverse historical layers of any fort in South India.

Kanadukathan is the centre of the Chettinad mansions experience, the village most densely concentrated with the palatial homes of the Natukottai Chettiyars. Walking its streets between the great houses — some inhabited, some empty, all extraordinary — is one of the most unusual urban experiences in India. The Athangudi Palace is the highlight: a mansion built with Italian marble floors, Japanese tiles, Belgian mirrors, Burma teak columns and ceilings of extraordinary workmanship, every material imported from a different country by a family whose trading connections made the world their supply chain.

The Athangudi tile workshop is the final stop, a working studio where the traditional method of making Chettinad floor tiles by hand has been practised for generations. Using only local sand, fine gravel and cement with hand-cut stencils and mineral pigment, craftsmen produce tiles of extraordinary pattern and colour — floral, geometric and paisley designs that are now sought by architects and interior designers across the world. Watching the process and understanding the craft gives the tile floors of the mansions you walked through that morning a completely different meaning.

An evening flight from Trichy returns to Chennai, arriving by 9 pm.