Chennai

Chennai lies on one of the longest urban beaches anywhere. Marina Beach runs for kilometres along the city's eastern edge, and Elliot's Beach in Besant Nagar is calmer and more local. Both are for evening walks, sea breezes, snacks and kite-flying, not swimming. The Bay of Bengal is warm, around 28°C, but the surf is heavy, the currents are strong and locals rarely go in beyond their knees.

If you want to swim, head south along the East Coast Road towards Kovalam and Mahabalipuram. Resort beaches and sheltered spots there are safer, but the water is still rough for much of the year. A beach vacation here usually ends up meaning a hotel pool.

Chennai is the heartland of Tamil cooking and eats extremely well at the everyday level. Mornings start in busy tiffin halls with idli, dosa, pongal and vada, washed down with filter coffee poured from a height between tumbler and davara. At lunch comes the full meals served on a banana leaf, rice with sambar, rasam, kootu and poriyal refilled until you stop them. Mylapore and T. Nagar are the classic places to eat this way.

Beyond the vegetarian canon there is fiery Chettinad chicken and mutton, Ambur and Dindigul-style biryani, coastal fish curries and late-evening stalls selling sundal and bajji along the beaches. Alcohol plays a small part and the international range is modest, so this is a city for people who want South Indian food at its source.

Chennai's sights reflect two histories side by side. In Mylapore, the Kapaleeshwarar Temple rises with a painted gopuram above a large temple tank, and in Triplicane the Parthasarathy Temple is just as much a working place of worship, best seen at dawn or at festival time. The Government Museum in Egmore holds one of the finest collections of Chola bronzes in the world.

The city's other history is British Madras. Fort St George houses St Mary's Church, the oldest Anglican church east of Suez. Along the Marina and around George Town stand red Indo-Saracenic landmarks: the High Court, the Ripon Building and Chennai Central station. San Thome Basilica stands over the traditional tomb of St Thomas. These sights are spread out and the city is not a great walking museum.

Chennai goes to bed early. Drinking is tightly regulated, so most bars and lounges are in hotels or a few licensed pubs around Nungambakkam, Alwarpet and the East Coast Road. They draw a young professional crowd on weekends and close well before the small hours. The evening social life is mostly outdoors and sober: families and friends on the beaches, crowds at temple festivals, late dinners. Anyone looking for a big night out will find little here.

The landscape around Chennai is flat coastal plain, and the outdoors here means birds, wetlands and the sea. Guindy National Park, a small reserve within the city, has blackbuck and spotted deer, and the Pallikaranai marsh and the Adyar estuary draw waders and herons. In winter the Vedanthangal bird sanctuary, about two hours away, and the Pulicat lagoon to the north fill with migrating pelicans, storks and flamingos.

On the coast, small surf schools work the breaks at Kovalam on the East Coast Road, and on winter nights volunteers lead turtle walks to protect olive ridley nests. There are no hills to hike, and heat and humidity make outdoor activity a matter for early mornings.

Two outstanding trips make up most of the list. Mahabalipuram, about an hour down the coast, is a UNESCO site of seventh-century Pallava carving: the Shore Temple, the Five Rathas and the vast open-air relief known as Arjuna's Penance. Kanchipuram, about two hours inland, is one of Hinduism's holy cities. Its great temples include the Kailasanathar, Ekambareswarar and Varadharaja Perumal, and it has long been a centre of silk weaving.

Closer to home, DakshinaChitra on the East Coast Road shows reconstructed vernacular houses from across the south. The colonial Dutch remains at Pulicat make a short excursion. Pondicherry's French quarter and Vellore's fort are worth the journey but are long days out, often better done with an overnight stay.

Children are welcomed warmly everywhere in Chennai, but the city does little to make a family trip easy. The Arignar Anna Zoological Park at Vandalur is large and green, and has the best day out for children. There are also amusement parks along the East Coast Road, the Birla Planetarium and the children's park beside Guindy. Evenings on Elliot's Beach, with balloons, pony rides and snacks, are a local family ritual, though no one should swim. Heat, traffic, few pavements and long distances between sights tire young children quickly, so a hotel with a pool and a hired car with a driver make the trip much easier.

Chennai is spread out, hot and short of usable pavements, so walking between sights is rarely practical outside small pockets such as the lanes around the Kapaleeshwarar Temple. The metro is clean and air-conditioned and links the airport, Central station and parts of the south and west. The older suburban trains and the elevated MRTS line serve the coast towards Mylapore, but neither reaches every sight. Most visitors use auto-rickshaws and app-based cabs, which are cheap and easy to find, though traffic is heavy at rush hour. For day trips, hiring a car with a driver is the norm.

Shopping in Chennai means silk, gold and textiles. T. Nagar, around Ranganathan Street and Pondy Bazaar, is a huge crush of multi-storey sari emporia, jewellers and street stalls. Families come from across the south to buy wedding silks here, and long-established silk houses sell Kanchipuram weaves in every weight and colour. Mylapore is gentler, with brass lamps, temple jewellery, flowers and music shops around the tank, and state handicraft emporia sell bronzes, Tanjore paintings and handloom cotton. Big malls cover international brands, but fashion and design beyond Indian textiles are thin.

Chennai is very cheap for a visitor. A full vegetarian meal or a tiffin breakfast costs very little, filter coffee is almost free, and autos, buses, suburban trains and the metro cost little. Temples are free to enter and museum fees are low. The main expense is accommodation: good business hotels are aimed at corporate travellers and cost noticeably more than everything else, while simpler hotels and guesthouses stay inexpensive. Alcohol, sold mainly in hotels, is the other expense.

Chennai is the capital of Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam dance, and at its peak it is extraordinary. During the Margazhi season, from December into January, the city's sabhas stage hundreds of concerts and recitals. The Music Academy and halls across Mylapore and T. Nagar run from morning to night, morning concerts are often free, and the season's canteens are part of the ritual.

The rest of the year is quieter but far from empty. Sabhas hold regular concerts and dance performances, and the Kalakshetra campus in Thiruvanmiyur stages classical dance. Temple festivals bring nadaswaram and drums into the streets, and Tamil theatre has a loyal following. Opera, Western classical music and touring musicals are rare.

Chennai has no bathing tradition and is a demanding city to slow down in, with heat, horns and crowds. It does have a serious yoga heritage, as modern hatha yoga teaching has deep roots here, and studios in Mylapore and Adyar teach in that lineage. Ayurvedic and Kerala-style massage centres are easy to find and inexpensive. The calmest places are outside the centre: the shaded grounds of the Theosophical Society in Adyar, and the beach resorts along the East Coast Road with spas and quiet gardens.