Seventy-six villages of extraordinary ancestral mansions, a cuisine like no other on earth, handmade Athangudi floor tiles in every colour, and a pace of life that stopped a century ago when the merchant ships stopped sailing.
The Nattukotai Chettiars were the great merchant bankers of colonial Southeast Asia — funding rubber plantations in Malaya, rice mills in Burma, the early infrastructure of Ceylon. The money flowed home to Tamil Nadu's Sivaganga district, and they spent it on mansions.
Not modest mansions. Mansions with 60, 80, 100 rooms. Burmese teak pillars and Italian marble floors. Belgian chandeliers and ornate plasterwork. Each one built to outshine the neighbours, to demonstrate that the family had gone further and returned richer. When the trade collapsed in the 1930s and 40s, the merchants came home — and stayed. The mansions are still there. Many are still occupied by the families who built them.
This journey moves through that landscape slowly, with the access that our Madurai base gives us. We know the families. We eat at their tables.
Tell us your dates and we'll design a journey with the access that thirteen years of relationships makes possible.