Tamilnadu A Journey in Time Part II: People, Places and Potpourri

Stretching across nearly the entire width of peninsular India, the Vindhya Range symbolically divides the North and South. South of the Vindhya range lies a triangular-shaped mass of ancient rock, the Deccan Plateau, which slopes gently eastward towards the Bay of Bengal. Godavari, Krishna and the Cauvery are Southern rivers that originate in the rain-soaked peaks of the Western Ghats.The Western Ghats Mountain Range or the Sahyadri Range begins South of the Tapti River, close to the boundary of Maharashtra and Gujarat. The Western Ghats begin to rise north of Mumbai, running parallel to the coast, until they reach the tip of the peninsula of India. Here, they merge with the southernmost portion of the Eastern Ghats, a chain of low interrupted ranges that sweeps northeast in the direction of Chennai. A spirit of adventure is evident in the efforts of these explorers. Braving malarial jungle, these hardy men doggedly worked the land, crafting beautiful and productive estates out of the pristine forests. It was an enterprise in the best sense, leaving a legacy for the later generations to build on.In Tamilnadu: A Journey in Time Part II, we embark on a journey of about three thousand years’ history of the evolution of dynasties, colonial explorations, trade, missionary work; sprinkles of stories from personal diaries interwoven with anecdotal tales and punctuated with biographies, mostly as book excerpts, which will take us back to a long-buried era when West met the East. We bring you the modern world as we see it today, as the East reaches out to the West.