Visit Chennai, Tamil Nadu, South India

To a first time visitor, India seems to be an abstruse riddle with exotic experiences and colorful cultural exposures. India’s diverse flora, fauna, languages, attires, traditions, religious sects, architectural variety, music, dances, cuisines, geography etc make a tourist spell-bound. India is perceived by them as a different world altogether.

If a tour starts from or ends in Chennai, one must visit Dakshinachitra. An excellent example of best kind of heritage tourism, Dakshinachitra showcases rural life and architecture from all four South Indian states of India, tastefully and charmingly. Entire houses of Tamil Brahmins, Chettiar traders, Syrian Christians and Andhra weavers, among others, have been carefully translanted from the original villages and rebuilt in this sprawling campus. They have been furnished with authentic artifacts, furniture and objects of daily living, to give you a glimpse of the rural South India.

Plus, there are small museums that showcase textiles, vessels, history and craft. To add to the experience, you can have your fortune told by a parrot at the village square, practice a Kollam (rice flour design) in one of the houses, or mess with clay at the potter’s wheel. Artisans from across the country periodically demonstrate and sell their work here. And if you visit during a festival like Pongal or Navratri, you can catch a folk dance or street play.