Travel in Thanjavur (Tanjore)

Thanjavur and Tanjore are the same town, and both spellings appear in our itineraries. It was the Chola capital from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, and two of the fifteen India tours reach it. They treat it so differently that the first thing to settle is which one you are reading.

The diversity of South India, 25 days, from EUR 2,860, is the one that stays. It arrives by road from Pondicherry on day five, stopping at the Chola temple at Gangaikonda Cholapuram and the pilgrimage town of Kumbakonam on the way in. Then two nights at Hotel Sangam in an Executive room, which makes day six a full day in the town rather than a rush. That day is the Brihadishvara Temple, 61 metres of granite dedicated to Shiva and a UNESCO site, followed by the CSI Schwartz Memorial Church, built in 1779 by the German missionary Christian Friedrich Schwartz, and then the town markets. Day seven drives on to Madurai, roughly four hours south.

South India – Exotic World, 11 days, from EUR 1,570, does not stay. Here Thanjavur is a stop on a driving day. Day four runs from Pondicherry down to the Chettinad region, taking in the Airavateswarar Temple at Darasuram and then the Brihadishvara Temple, and the night is in Chettinad. You get the Big Temple and the road out of town. Better to know that now than on the day.

The harder thing to say is what is missing from both. The Thanjavur Maratha Palace is in neither itinerary. Not the Saraswathi Mahal Library, not the gallery of Chola bronzes, not the bell tower. It is the town's second landmark and the thing most people picture after the temple, and no day as written includes it. The 25-day tour passes close, since the Schwartz church stands near the palace grounds, but passing close is not visiting. Every trip we sell is private and built around your dates, so the palace is a fair thing to raise while the itinerary is still being written. Raise it then, not on the morning.

Tanjore painting, the gold-leaf style that carries the town's name, is not in either itinerary. Neither is a veena workshop, and neither is Thiruvaiyaru, a few kilometres north, where the Thyagaraja music festival fills a week each January. The day-six markets are as close as either trip comes to the craft side of Thanjavur.

One more thing, for anyone travelling by UNESCO list. The Great Living Chola Temples are inscribed as a single site made of three: Brihadishvara at Thanjavur, Brihadishvara at Gangaikonda Cholapuram, and Airavatesvara at Darasuram. The 25-day tour visits the first two. The 11-day visits the first and the third. Neither, as written, visits all three. If collecting the set is the point of your trip, say so before you book, because no itinerary does it off the shelf.

Getting in and out is by road on both tours. No domestic flight is written into either itinerary for this stretch, and no overnight train. The nearest airport is Tiruchirappalli, about sixty kilometres away, and neither tour uses it, since both begin in Chennai. The Nilgiri toy train on the 25-day tour is real, but it runs on day fourteen up in the hills, and has nothing to do with Thanjavur.

Both tours are private and guided, with a German-speaking guide, 24-hour contact and no fixed departure dates. International flights are not included. Rooms come in Standard, Deluxe, Superior and Executive, and there is no five-star tier in the programme. Thanjavur sits inland and gets hot: November to February is the window worth booking, March to June is punishing, and the northeast monsoon brings rain from October into December.