Our heritage tour package is tailored to delight the devotee, and the ardent explorer of anthropology, history and architecture in equal measure.

 

The tour is primarily around The Great Living Chola temples, a UNESCO World Heritage site designation for a group of Chola era Hindu temples, built at the peak of powers of India’s greatest ever dynasty.

 

Sites:

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1. Brihadeeswarar Temple, Thanjavur, (The Big Temple): A contender to India’s greatest architecture marvel, a deserved competitor to the more widely recognized Ta jMahal itself, is the magnificent Brihadeeswarar temple built by King Raja Raja Chola I in 1000 AD. The Vimana tower, built of granite, was one of the tallest structures in the world at the time of its construction. How an 80 tonne granite stone was carried up this tall structure, with no known availability of the rock in a 100 km radius, is one of the wonders of the world.

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2. Gangai Konda Chola Puram: Completed by King Rajendra Chola I, son of Raja RajaChola I, in celebration of conquest of plains of river Ganga, is no less in architectural complexity to his father’s Big Temple.

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3. Airavateeswara Temple, more popularly known as Darasuram temple: Built by Raja Raja Chola II, is one among a cluster of eighteen medieval era large Hindu temples in the Kumbakonam area. The stone temple incorporates a chariot structure, and includes major Vedic and Puranic deities.

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4. Kallanai Dam, also known as Grand Anicut. The world’s oldest man made dam, built by King Karikala Chola between 100 BC and 100 AD, is one of the most studied ancient structures by world’s eminent architects.  The Dam is built on the merging point of the holy river Kaveri and the larger river Kollidam

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5. Raja Raja Chola memorial: Udayalur, a small village near Kumbakonam, is believed to be the final resting place of King Raja Raja Chola I. The humble unnoticed memorial of arguably India’s greatest ever emperor is an irony.

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6.  House of Srinivasa Ramanujan, the man who knew infinity: One of the greatest minds in mathematics, the journal of whose sits in parallel to Sir Isaac Newton himself in the Trinity College. The genius’ house in Kumbakonam is so inconspicuous that if you happen to walk by on this crowded street, you can easily miss it. But, we are here to make sure that you don’t.