By road
~55 km from Chennai
South India · Tamil Nadu
Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu
Shore temples and stone-carved myth · ~55 km from Chennai
Getting there
By rail
Chengalpattu, ~25-30 km
By air
Chennai International Airport, ~55-60 km
Best time to visit
November to February — cool sea air over the stone
Don't miss
Shore Temple
Arjuna's Penance
Pancha Rathas
Krishna's Butter Ball
Things to do
Surfing
Sculpture walks
Seafood dinners on the beach
Where to eat
Sources: open-meteo, wikimedia, Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg · CC BY 4.0
What to pack
Sun hat, water, sandals for sandy temple courtyards
A quieter corner
Watching stone sculptors at work in the village workshops
About Mahabalipuram
- Coastal
Where it is
Mahabalipuram, or Mamallapuram, is a town on the Bay of Bengal in Tamil Nadu's Chengalpattu district, on the Coromandel Coast about 60 km south of Chennai.
History
Mahabalipuram was a port of the Pallava kings, who in the 7th and 8th centuries filled it with rock-cut cave shrines, monolithic temples and relief carvings. It takes its name from Narasimhavarman I, known as Mamalla, and its monuments became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984.
People
Mahabalipuram's people speak Tamil, and the town is famous for its stone carvers, who still shape granite deities and statues, and for a government college of architecture and sculpture founded in 1957 to keep the craft alive. Fishing families live along the shore, and each winter a dance festival is staged against the monuments.
Known for
- The Shore Temple beside the sea
- Arjuna's Penance, a vast open-air relief
- The Pancha Rathas monolithic temples
- Krishna's Butterball boulder
- Stone carvers' workshops
Did you know?
The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami shifted the sand along Mahabalipuram's shore and exposed the remains of an old collapsed temple and Pallava-era rock carvings of lions, elephants and peacocks.
We haven't written a guide for this place yet — you can still plan a trip here.