Chennai to Kancheepuram

Planned for a Kanchipuram trip from Chromepet, started on 25-8-13 Sunday morning 6.30 am, took the gandhi road mudichur road combination to beat the Tambaram traffic, joined at Vandaloor with the Padapai Walajabad road, (here one can take the new Chennai outer Ring Road through Service road, not sure how the exit points are positioned, i didnt venture but other vehicles were entering and existing ORR) ride till Oragadam flyover was smooth, at the Oragadam apollo flyover it is complete in one direction only (Kanchipuram to Chennai Direction) but traffic is allowed both ways on the one direction, i was wondering when a Maruti proceeding ahead of me why he is driving on the wrong lane as he was taking the flyover, i missed the flyover ramp, had to go through the service road take a u turn and again come to the kanchipuram road. A NTL Innova following me also didnt know the route he followed me and took the broken service roads.




After Oragadam at few places the 4 lane divided road change to 2 lanes without divider and without warning so great caution to be exercised.
Reached Varadarajaswamy temple at 7.30 am, it was too crowded due to some other state pilgrim visit, skipped the temple without darshan, paid 2 rs for the lizard hall view, Here they collected parking fee of 30 rs, but the person informed me it is valid for parking at all the temples at kanchipuram, is it so?
Had breakfast at Sakthy Ganapathy hotel(Mostly manned by women) breakfast was good, visited Kachabeshwar temple, parked the vehicle in the next street and walked the way to Kamatchi Amman temple, queue was there but it was moving without stop had darshan in 20 minutes time, then visited the Murugan temple and walked up to the Ekambaraeswarar temple, what a massive temple!! with its big gopuram, huge prakaram and 1008 lingams the temple was neat and clean and in fact they were cleaning the nayanmar corridor.
Started and looked out for the kailasanathar temple famous of Narasimhavarama II, whose father made Mahabalipuram sculputures, the road to Kailasanathar temple was broken village road not found any direction marking and finally reached the temple it was in a dilapidate state all the carvings and statues are eroded and weathered, the pooja was being conducted hence they told to wait for 15 minutes, in scorching sun the temple precincts were too hot to stand on barefoot, rushed out immediately, was very sad to find the temple's condition.
Started to home by 12.15 pm through the NH4 through Vellagate, the railway crossing had a huge crater had to negotiate carefully and in another 10 minutes reached NH4, the road widening is happening and traffic was more on that day, but the road was full of potholes not sure how NHAI permits to collect Toll and still maintain the road filled with potholes at many places the pavement is completely disfigured due to bleeding of bitumen and shovelling the markings are completely gone out of shape.
Reached Nokia plant and took right turn in to the Manimangalam road, it was well marked, i was afraid whether i will miss it!, the road is 2 lane but neatly relaid and road markings are perfect, most of the road has huge tamraind trees on either sides continuously to give a green tunnel effect, traffic was sparse, but at Manimangalam the curves are too near and tight, reached Mudichur road and the divided road with 1.25 lanes on each side is a real pain if a MTC bus is moving ahead, they will not proceed at proper speed and they will not stop at edges at the bus stop to allow other vehicles to proceed, sadistic fellows they want the entire traffic to follow them as convoy, reached Gandhi road at 1.15 pm and checked Chandrasekar biriyani it was all sold out, they told us to wait for 20 minutes for the next lot to arrive, not having the patience proceeded and reached home by 1.30pm.
Overall 122km Up and down.
Ekambareswarar temple has huge parking lot, so one proceeding to Kanchipuram on a temple visit can park the vehicles at this place and visit other temples nearby in leisurely manner by foot.









Had a good darshan, came back and purchased the famous silk saree!, how can Kanchipuram visit be complete without the silk saree.