Kanchipuram popularly called as just Kanchi is well known for two things in India. One as a temple city having beautiful architecture rich old temples from the Pallava, Chola and Vijayanagar dynasties around the 6th to 9th century timeframe. Secondly its equally famous for its weaving industry producing silk sarees known as Kanchipuram sarees. A wedding in south India, typically Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Andra Pradesh is incomplete without the bride and all women attending, adorning these beautiful and expensive sarees woven with silk and gold thread.
My visit to this temple city was a while back as a part of the road trip I did covering Kanchi, Srirangam and Madurai , basically being a trip visiting temples in these towns and those that were on the way.
Getting Here : The closest city to Kanchi is Chennai around 80kms and you can either hire a car from Chennai or take a bus to Kanchi. I drove from Bangalore which is around 280kms away from Kanchi. From Bangalore you can hire a car to get here or there are several buses plying to this place, I could not find any direct trains from Bangalore.
Its a small town but you will still need some mode of transport to visit the various temples as they are a little spread out. Autorickshaw as we call it in India or tuk-tuks as known everywhere else can be used for this too, you can either bargain a price for the whole day or just for drops. A note here, Kailasanathar temple which is around 3 kms from the town center is a little remote and so getting an auto back may be an issue, its not too much of a walk through the small village road till you may get an auto.
Temples of importance and that are not to be missed are mainly three, Kailasanathar temple, Ekambareshwar temple and Varadharaja Perumal temple for their architecture. The other temples are also beautiful but they are more for worship as either only Hindus are allowed or due to the crowds and daily rituals you cant really explore the temple as most areas would be cornered off.
Kailasanathar Temple : This is the oldest temple in Kanchipuram believed to have been built around 685AD by the Pallavas. The temple is a stone built structure, sandstone, in the typical Pallava Dravidian style. The main deity here as the name implies is Siva, Kailasanathar meaning “Lord of the cosmic mountain”. The main temple with the vimana is at the center of the complex which houses the 16 faced shivalinga. The compound wall that encloses the main shrine has 58 small shrines built into the niches of the wall making the walk around the main shrine a rich experience.
The main Gopuram, or gate to the Ekambareswara temple
Thousand Pillared halls surrounding the temple
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