Temples, Carnatic music and the Bay of Bengal

Chennai, known as Madras until 1996, is the capital of Tamil Nadu and a major port on the Bay of Bengal. The English East India Company completed Fort St George on this shore in 1644, and the city grew by absorbing the older Tamil villages around it, among them Mylapore, Triplicane and Egmore. Their names still mark distinct neighbourhoods, each with its own temples, markets and daily rhythm.

This is the heartland of Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam dance. Every December and into January the city holds its Music Season, when the sabhas, cultural associations with their own halls, stage hundreds of concerts and recitals, and their canteens serve breakfast between performances. Kalakshetra, the academy Rukmini Devi Arundale founded in 1936, still trains dancers and musicians on its leafy campus in the south of the city.

Breakfast is the meal to plan around: idli and dosa with sambar and coconut chutney, crisp vadai, and filter coffee, frothed by pouring it back and forth between tumbler and bowl. A full lunch arrives on a banana leaf. For heat, look for Chettinad cooking, the peppery, spice-laden cuisine of the Chettiar merchant community from the south of the state. Expect warmth in every season; even in January the afternoons reach the high twenties.