Chennai rewards thin wallets: entry to most temples and churches costs nothing, a museum runs ₹15, and street bajjis go for ₹10. Three days of banyan groves, Chola bronzes, flower auctions and estuary sunsets, all on small change.
Free 260-acre riverside garden hiding a 450-year-old banyan whose aerial roots sprawl across half an acre. Gates open 08:30-10:00 and 14:00-16:00, closed Sundays; sign the visitor book at the Blavatsky Gardens gate.
Six red-brick Indo-Saracenic buildings holding the world's finest Chola bronze collection, including the 11th-century Nataraja. Indians pay ₹15, foreigners ₹250, camera ₹200. Closed Fridays, open 09:30-17:00.
Free neo-Gothic white basilica raised over the tomb of St Thomas the Apostle, one of only three churches worldwide built above an apostle's grave. The underground tomb chapel and small museum open 06:00-20:00 daily.
Besant Nagar's calmer strip of sand ends at the eight-tiered Ashtalakshmi Temple, free to enter and stacked in unusual vertical shrines. The Karl Schmidt Memorial sits on the sand; sundal vendors sell spiced chickpeas for ₹20.
Asia's largest perishable goods market: roughly 3,000 shops across 295 acres, busiest 04:00-08:00. Entry is free — walk the flower block where jasmine sells by weight, then the fruit sheds where mangoes go for ₹40 a kilo.
A 1948 institution where waiters ladle extra sambar over your idli until you tell them to stop. Two idlis with unlimited sambar run about ₹60, filter coffee ₹30. Tiny tables, cash preferred, queue spills onto Triplicane High Road.
Chennai's Marwari-Gujarati quarter north of Parry's Corner. Graze Mint Street for ₹30 jigarthanda, ₹40 pav bhaji and ₹25 kachori, then cut into Burma Bazaar's alleys for discounted electronics and haggled cotton.
The 'window shop' — a hole in a wall selling bondas and bajjis passed out through an iron grille since the 1970s. Ten rupees a piece, served on newspaper, usually sold out by 19:30 with a queue forming from 17:00.
Romulus Whitaker's 1972 reptile park sits inside scrubland forest still roamed by blackbuck. ₹40 adults, ₹20 children, open 09:00-17:30 except Tuesdays. King cobra, mugger crocodile and python enclosures cluster near the entrance.
Chennai's elevated MRTS line runs above the Buckingham Canal in half-empty carriages with rooftop-level views over Adyar and the backwaters. A single ticket costs around ₹10 and trains leave roughly every 15 minutes.
A 39m stone chariot memorial to the poet Thiruvalluvar, its corridor walls carved with all 1,330 Kural couplets. Entry ₹5; the raised terrace gives a rare elevated view across Nungambakkam. Open 08:00-18:00 daily.
A collapsed 1970s causeway stranded on the Adyar estuary sandbar, reached free on foot from Urur Olcott Kuppam. Flamingos and pelicans work the lagoon at dusk and the ruined span frames the cheapest sunset in the city.