The Rough Guide to South India

by David Abram, M Ford, D. Sen

INTRODUCTION Though its borders are uncertain, there’s no doubt that South India, the tapering tropical half of this mighty peninsula, differs radically from the landlocked north. Stepping off a winter flight from foggy Delhi into the glasshouse humidity of Chennai or Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), you enter a world far removed from the muted hues of Punjab and the great Indian river plains. In the south, the coconut groves seem a deeper green and the rice paddies positively luminescent, the faces are a darker brown and the vermilion caste marks smeared over them arrestingly red. The region’s heavy rainfall means that lush paddy fields and palm groves patchwork the sun-bleached volcanic soils during all but the hottest months. But under a sun whose rays feel concentrated by a giant magnifying glass, the ubiquitous colours of South India – of silk saris, shimmering classical dance costumes, roadside political posters and frangipani flowers – radiate with a life of their own. South India’s three mightiest rivers – the Godavari, the Krishna and the Kaveri – and their countless tributaries, flow east across a low, fertile alluvial basin that has been inhabited as long as anywhere in the subcontinent. Separated from the prehistoric Indus valley civilizations of the northwest by tracts of barren hills, the earliest South Indian societies are thought to have evolved independently of their northern cousins. Periodic invasions – from the marauding Muslims whose descendants would later erect the Taj Mahal, to the evangelizing, pepper-hungry Portuguese and ineffectual French – left their marks on the territory referred to in some of India’s oldest inscriptions as Dravidadesa, "Land of the Dravidians". None, however, not even the ruthlessly efficient British, ever fully subjugated the south. As a result, traditions, languages and ways of life have endured intact here for more than two thousand years – a fact that lends to any journey into the region a unique resonance. The persistence of a distinctly Dravidian culture in part accounts for the regionalism that has increasingly dominated the political and cultural life of the South since Independence in 1947. With the exception of Goa, a former Portuguese colony, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the borders of the states covered in this book – Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh – were drawn along linguistic lines. Each state boasts its own distinctive styles of music, dance, architecture and cuisine, not to mention religious cults and dress. Moreover, attempts by New Delhi to homogenize the country by imposing Hindi, the most widely spoken language in the North, as the medium of education and government, have consistently met with resistance, stimulating support for the regional parties whose larger-than-life leaders beam munificently from giant hoardings in every major town and city. More pervasive even than the power of politics in South India is the influence of religion, which, despite the country’s resolutely secular constitution, still permeates every aspect of life. Of the four major faiths, Hinduism is by far the most prevalent, practised by around eighty percent of the population. If the sacred peaks of the Himalayas are Hinduism’s head, and the Ganges its main artery, then the temple complexes of the South are its spiritual heart and soul. Soaring high above every urban skyline, their colossal towers are emblematic of the awe with which the deities enshrined inside them have been held for centuries. Some, like the sea-washed temple at Tiruchendur in Tamil Nadu, are thought to be as old as human speech itself; others, such as the Sabarimala forest shrine in Kerala are less ancient, but attract greater numbers of pilgrims than even Mecca. For foreign visitors, however, the most extraordinary of all have to be the colossal Chola shrines of Tamil Nadu. Joining the crowds that stream through Madurai’s Meenakshi-Sundareshwar temple or Shri Ramalingeshwara in Rameshwaram will take you to the very taproot of the world’s last surviving classical culture, some of whose hymns, prayers and rites predate the Egyptian pyramids. By comparison, Islam, South India’s second religion, is a fledgling faith, first introduced by Arab traders along the coast in the twelfth century. Later, offshoots of the Muslim dynasties that ruled the North carved out feudal kingdoms beyond the Godavari, establishing a band of Islamic culture across the middle of the Deccan plateau. Other elements in the great South Indian melting pot include a dozen or more denominations of Christianity, ranging from the ancient Syrian Orthodoxy believed to have been introduced by the apostle St Thomas, to the Roman Catholicism of Old Goa’s Portuguese Jesuits. The region also harbours sites sacred to Jains, followers of the prophet Mahavira, a contemporary of Buddha, while in Kochi, Kerala, a vestigial population of Jews is all that remains of a once thriving mercantile community. Since Inde...

Genres: Travel

744 pages, Paperback

First published January 7, 2002

About the author

Freelance travel writer David Abram was born and brought up in south Wales and the Mendip Hills of Somerset. His first foray into the Corsican mountains came in 1986, during the sabbatical year of a French degree, when he stumbled upon some waymarks and followed them blindly for two days until wild pigs polished off his supplies. Since then, as an anthropologist and author of the Rough Guide to India, he's walked extensively in the Himalayas, Europe and North America but still regards Corsica as a benchmark trekking destination.

Reviews

[Magda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though its borders are uncertain, there's no doubt that South India, the tapering tropical half of this mighty peninsula, differs radically from the landlocked North. Stepping into the greenhouse humidity of Chennai or Thiruvanathapuram (Trivandrum), you enter a world far removed from the muted hues of the great Indian river plains. In the South, the coconut groves seem a deeper green and the rice paddies positively luminescent, the faces are a darker brown and the vermilion caste marks smeared over them arrestingly red. The region's heavy rainfall means that lush paddy fields and palm groves patchwork the volcanic soils during all but the hottest months. And under a sun whose rays feel concentrated by a giant magnifying glass, the ubiquitous colours of South India - of silk saris, shimmering classical dance costumes, roadside political posters and frangipani flowers - radiate with a life of their own.

Chennai boasts some of India's most sophisticated medical facilities, which is just as well, because it is officially one of the unhealthiest places in the world.

Indians from elsewhere in the country love to caricature their southern cousins as "reactionary rice growers" led by "fanatical film stars". While such stereotypes should be taken with a pinch of salt, it is undeniable that the Tamil way of life, which has evolved along a distinctive and unbroken path since prehistoric times, sets it apart from the rest of the Subcontinent. This remains, after all, one of the last places in the world where a classical culture has survived into the present - "India's Holy Land", described by Marco Polo as "the most splendid province in the world".

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Less "written for american" feeling than the lonely planet series. I brought this on our trip in 2005 - my friends had the lonely planet South india guide. Together the two books were pretty useful references for our side trips - though as we were visiting family and friends, we were well off of most paths and destinations detailed in the books.