I, along with my 4 school friends (Arun, Selva, Bala and Chandru(NRI)) started for a trip to Chidambaram and Pondicherry on 19th October 2009. Although this trip was planned a month ago, with about 9 members, only 5 of us turned out for the trip. Though, it was planned initially that our friend Selva would drive his Scorpio for the trip, we made a small tweak to the plan at the last minute by getting a paid driver for the trip. We would consider our self lucky, since the driver was from Chidambaram.
After having a look at the Kollu idols at chandru’s home, we started for the trip at around 2 PM. The first agenda in our itinery was the boating at the Mudaliyar kuppam boat house, which is located at about 30 mins ride from mamallapuram. After half-an-hour boating, we started to our next location “The Alambari Fort”.
I have been in Chennai for more than 25 years and have never heard about an existence of any fort in the ECR. It took about an hour drive from Mahabalipuram to reach this fort. The fort did really exist in a village named Kadapakkam, but really in a very bad state.
Apart from the damaged partial walls of the fort, there is nothing left. The Fort is located just across the backwaters of the sea. To the eastern side of the fort, it’s just an excellent view of the lagoons. There are local fishermen around the fort, who would entertain shipping around the fort, which doesn’t guarantee any safety at all. There is nothing much left to do or see around this fort. After clicking few snaps, we started to Chidambaram. We reached Chidambaram at around 9 PM and stayed at a hotel. 
The next day early morning, we started at around 7 AM to the “Thillai Natarajar Koil”. The first thing that would strike any one, who sees the temple, is the wide grand “Gopuram”. The four grand Gopuram (although not very tall) provides entrance to the temple from all the four direction.
Some of the great significance of this temple are:1. In Tamilnadu, Shiva is usually worshipped in the form of “Lingam” and it is one of the few temples in the south India which has Shiva in Manly form (Natarajar).
2. It has both Shiva and Vishnu which is yet another rare occurrence in any temple. In ancient temple, there was great debate on existence of both Shiva and Vishnu idol in the sample temple between the Vaishanavas(disciple of Vishnu) and Shivaites(disciple of shiva). The Initial sequence of the Kamal film “Dasavatharam” is picturised only based on this temple.
3. The world fame “Natiyanjali” dance festival is celebrated in this great temple.
4. While it can be seen that this vast and great architectural temple is
build completely using rock stone, the interesting fact is that geographically Chidambaram is an plain region and hence it can be sensed that, these massive rocks stones were transported from other regions across several kms distance.5. This religious as well as architecturally significant temple is build by chola dynasty. The temple has a large tank as well as a “1000 kaal mandapam”.
The temple was maintained neat and it is constructed with such perfection that it doesn’t require much external light source for ventilation. The temple was not crowded and really mesmerized me with this beauty. This temple which was under the control of the Iyers for very long time was very recently taken up the government. Great thanks to the driver anna who shared a lot of information regarding this temple with us. After an hour of visit around the temple, we started to “Pichavaram”
Pichavaram is just a 40 mins drive from Chidambaram temple. Pichavaram is the second largest mangrove 
forest in the world. Mangrove forest is nothing but forest developed over the saline water. In Pichavaram, the forest is developed over the backwaters of the Bay of Bengal. Tamil Nadu tourism provides boating across the Mangrove forest of Pichavaram. We just took a motor boat ride of 45 mins across the bushes and trees of the Pichavaram forest. This mangrove forest stretches long way till the Bay of Bengal. Interested people can take a ride till this point for an amount of Rs. 2000/-, which would be a 2hrs journey.
forest in the world. Mangrove forest is nothing but forest developed over the saline water. In Pichavaram, the forest is developed over the backwaters of the Bay of Bengal. Tamil Nadu tourism provides boating across the Mangrove forest of Pichavaram. We just took a motor boat ride of 45 mins across the bushes and trees of the Pichavaram forest. This mangrove forest stretches long way till the Bay of Bengal. Interested people can take a ride till this point for an amount of Rs. 2000/-, which would be a 2hrs journey. 
After Pichavaram, we started to Pondicherry to visit an island (not exactly an island, a beach sand bed surrounded by the backwaters) in Pondicherry. Since it was more crowded in the island and since boys were done with boating, we decided to skip the island and start for the home. On the way to home, we went to the Aurobindo ashramam at Pondicherry.
Though at some point of time, we missed our friends ( vijay, magi, ravi, sati, hari, veera & prasanna), yet it was more memorable, enjoyable and informative one. With a sense of having spend a weekend very useful, we returned back home exactly at 7PM.
Please check out the following links for more photos on our trip.
http://picasaweb.google.com/parthi007/Chidambaram#
http://picasaweb.google.com/selvakumar84/ChidambaramTrip?authkey=Gv1sRgCL-Hp4uFzNyyNw&feat=content_notification#
