It would have been easy to catch another train direct from Madurai to Thanjavur but we were keen to explore the grand mansions and renowned food of the Chettinad region. So a relatively short, two hour, taxi ride brought us to The Bangala, in Karaikkudi. Set behind anonymous white walls, an oasis of calm and elegance in the heart of the busy town. The Bangala was originally a country club and still retains the colonial charm, with verandas set around quadrangles of manicured lawns and beautiful flowering bougainvilleas, and a beautiful pool which Debbie had to herself for most of our stay. It is highly recommended for its food, by no less than Madhur Jaffrey, and was rated the 7th best restaurant in India by Conde Nast Traveller in 2019. Now obviously this place wasn’t quite within budget, but Debbie successfully argued that (1) we’d saved money elsewhere and (2) with dinner included it actually WAS within our combined daily accommodation & food/drink budget.
We were there for two nights and were looking forward to our first dinner, which was an extensive set menu detailed on a chalk board. An army of waiters just kept bringing food, and there was some very random stuff on the plate at the same time – cheesy baked aubergine alongside a creamy fishy curry, celery soup, tiny tandoori quail (we’ve seen bigger sparrows!) and a desert of ‘trifle pudding’ complete with tinned peaches/pears and glace cherries! Compared to most of the food we’ve had in India we found it very bland (the Domino’s on the train was spicier) presumably to avoid offending delicate Western palates. We both commented that we had enjoyed our £2.50 curries in Madurai the previous evening more than the expensive gourmet offering!
The hotel doesn’t have a liquor licence but the kitchen staff can supply booze on request – it just has to be paid for in cash and immediately. A nice little earner for someone at £4/bottle. They ran out of Kingfisher at one point and only had cans of British Empire beer in, which turned out to be the Indian version of Special Brew at 8% ABV – so actually better value as we couldn’t drink more than one each of them.
On the second day we had arranged a cookery demonstration at 17.30 where one of the chefs, assisted by a translator, showed us how to prepare local dishes; Tomato Rice, Chicken Pepper Fry, Prawn Masala and Potato Masala Fry. The price of the demo included dinner so we weren’t sure how this was going to work – would we taste/eat the prepared dishes and then have dinner later? We didn’t get to taste but were told that the dishes would be served with our dinner, so we had to stay hungry for a couple more hours.
At dinner, sure enough, the four dishes were brought to our table. As these had been prepared to our taste, they were a lot spicier than the standard offering and we enjoyed them much more. We left absolutely stuffed having eaten those as well as much of the set menu (the randomness continued that evening with cheesy broccoli, courgette fritters, pineapple salad and mutton curry, with marmalade bread & butter pudding for dessert).
Unfortunately we were both up in the night with dodgy tummies. We had thought that maybe keeping a Prawn Masala waiting for two hours before serving it wasn’t the best idea! Debbie was particularly badly affected, throwing up for a straight 8 hours and missing breakfast (and her sunbathing & swimming) the next day, but The Bangala were good enough to delay our check out until 2pm to give her more time to recover. On departure, when she mentioned her illness and questioned how the food had been stored after the cookery demo, the staff were very quick to say that it hadn’t been refrigerated!! Oh the irony – after 6 weeks in India where we’d not been THAT careful with what we ate, we succumbed to the Delhi Belly at a place famous for it’s food 🙁
Apart from the food (!), the other reason for visiting the region was to explore the Chettinad villages and mansions. The Chettiars were an ancient merchant community who made their fortune in the 19th Century supporting British trade routes to India and SE Asia and built lavish mansions in the some of the 95 villages of the region. They mansions mainly fell into disrepair when owners emigrated, but some have now been beautifully refurbished, some as VERY high end heritage hotels.
The owners of The Bangala own a local historic mansion that guests are able to view. Steve was cynical when we arrived but Debbie was insistent that we’d be allowed in. Eventually the caretaker spotted us hovering in the gateway and said ‘Bangala?’ and when we nodded he welcomed us in and showed us around. The MSMM House dates from the early 1900s and was built alongside the previous, slightly smaller house which was built about 40 years earlier. Both showcase the opulence that the Chettinad merchants enjoyed with intricate carvings, Belgian glass, Italian marble floors, marble and teak columns, and Japanese ceiling frescoes.
On our way to Thanjavur we briefly visited some of the more famous Chettinad mansions, Chettinad Palace and the beautiful village of Kandukathan.. We had planned half a day of sightseeing but there was no way that Debbie was going to be doing that – she got into the taxi armed with a couple of ‘just in case’ plastic bags and took a couple of those ‘chemotherapy sickness’ pills she was given for travel sickness back in Kerala. Well Steve reckoned there was nowt to lose by popping a couple of them to try to prevent her throwing up in the taxi! Chettinad really is a beautiful and interesting region and it’s a shame our exploring was compressed into a very short time.
One of the open secrets of Tamil Nadu is apparently that Karaikudi is the place to buy diamonds, so Debbie wondered whether there may be a bargain to be had – after all she does have her retirement gift money to spend. She did her research on what price she could purchase some diamond earrings for in the UK and we set off the the hotel’s recommended jewellers, a Seth family who settled there have been supplying diamonds to the Chattier community for generations & with a reputation for quality/trust rarely found in the cities. Following Google Maps we arrived at an anonymous building with a sign outside indicating the correct location but with no sign of jewels. We were ushered inside, past an armed guard to a huge room still with no diamonds but with lots of diamond weighing scales and credit card machines. A gentlemen asked what we were looking for and then showed us through to another room where a tray of earrings was brought out of a locked cupboard. There was nothing that Debbie liked, and they only did yellow gold anyway, so we left quickly and went to a secondary recommendation of jeweller which was a bit more typical. Debbie explained that she wanted white gold or Platinum and they duly brought out a beautiful pair of 0.8ct earrings (0.4ct each) which were exactly what she was looking for but probably bigger than she could afford. On asking about the quality she was told E/F colour, VS1 clarity – probably good enough for earrings – and then she asked about price. £2,500 – gulp – there’s no bargain to be had here! When she said ‘too expensive’ a lady appeared and said ‘ why? the diamonds are internally flawless and D colour’. That’s not what your mate just told me luv, so I don’t trust you at all now. And I really can’t afford them anyway. And (depending on which grade the diamonds really are) I can buy them for half to 2/3rds of the price in Birmingham Jewellery Quarter – with the benefit of being able to easily take them back of anything goes wrong or they turn out to be dodgy bits of glass.
Overall – The Bangala is a fabulous hotel apart from the food, Chettinad is a fascinating region that we wish we’d had more time to explore. it’s not on the main tourist trail but is not that far off the beaten track so well worth making the effort to get to.
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