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How Medieval India Turned Granite and Basalt Into Temples

The railway from Chennai to Mumbai runs off the ancient granite of southern India and onto the volcanic basalt of western India, and the change in rock is recorded in the temples along the way. It is not the usual reason for choosing the best train travel in India, but it may be one of the better ones. From the 7th to the 16th century, builders here turned two of the hardest stones available to them into temples that have outlasted every kingdom that paid for them. Seeing them by rail is the best train travel in India for anyone curious about history.

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Tour

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Marée & Meridian

Published

October 5, 2026

Six of the finest examples sit on a single heritage rail journey from Chennai to Mumbai aboard the Deccan Odyssey one of India’s great luxury train journeys, and seeing them in sequence makes the story easy to follow. Some were carved straight out of the rock. Others were assembled from cut blocks.

Granite in the South, Basalt at Ellora

Much of southern India rests on some of the oldest rock on the planet. The granite around Hampi, in the state of Karnataka, is more than two billion years old. Granite is dense, hard and slow to weather. It is slow and difficult to carve, but once worked it keeps its detail for centuries, which helps explain why so much early temple sculpture in the region has survived. It is also why the south offers some of the best train travel in India for lovers of architecture.

Ellora, in the state of Maharashtra, sits on the Deccan Traps, a vast plateau of volcanic rock formed by lava flows around 66 million years ago and covering much of western and central India. The basalt left behind lies in thick, even layers, and at Ellora it forms a long escarpment. For sculptors with the labour to match their ambition, that cliff could serve as quarry, building site and finished temple at once.

“Ellora’s basalt was laid down at around the same time the dinosaurs died out. By the standards of the rock, the sculptors turned up yesterday.”

Barrel-vaulted Bhima Ratha and stone elephant at Mahabalipuram, a highlight of the best train travel in India
The barrel-vaulted Bhima Ratha at the Pancha Rathas, Mahabalipuram, with the life-size stone elephant beside it.

Temples Cut From a Single Mass of Stone

At Mahabalipuram, on the Bay of Bengal south of Chennai, sculptors working for the Pallava dynasty, rulers of much of India’s southeast coast, carved five shrines from a single granite ridge in the 7th century. Known today as the Pancha Rathas, or Five Chariots, they were never finished or consecrated. The individual names, taken from the five Pandava brothers and their wife Draupadi in the Hindu epic the Mahabharata, were given by later tradition and have no historical connection to the shrines.

“An unfinished monument explains itself better than a finished one. On the Pancha Rathas, rough uncut rock still marks the point where the chisels stopped.”

Their appeal lies in their variety. Each follows a different design, with roofs ranging from a thatched-hut form to a barrel vault and a stepped pyramid, so the group reads like a set of working models for the temples of South India that followed. A life-size elephant, a lion and a bull, each carved from solid stone, stand among them.
Within about a century, carving a temple out of a hillside had reached its limit at Ellora. The Kailasa, Cave 16 of the 34 at the site, was created under the Rashtrakuta dynasty, then the dominant power across the Deccan plateau, and is generally credited to King Krishna I in the 8th century. Workers cut deep trenches into the basalt to isolate a vast block, then carved it from the top down, finishing the tower before the courtyard floor existed. Estimates of the rock removed commonly run to around 200,000 tonnes.

What remains is a complete temple complex, with shrines, pillared halls, a stone bridge and carved elephants, its main tower standing more than 30 metres above the courtyard. It was conceived as Mount Kailash, the Himalayan home of the Hindu god Shiva, and it ranks among the largest single excavations in the history of rock-cut architecture. Reaching it by rail is a fitting end to the best train travel in India.

Granite towers of the Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram facing the Bay of Bengal
The Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram, built from dressed granite blocks in the early 8th century and one of the earliest free-standing stone temples in southern India.

Building Upwards, One Block at a Time

By the time work began on the Kailasa, the Pallavas had already moved on to masonry. The Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram, dating from the early 8th century, was assembled from dressed granite blocks and is one of the earliest important free-standing stone temples in southern India. It holds three shrines, two dedicated to Shiva and one to Vishnu, and has faced the Bay of Bengal for some 1,300 years, which shows in the softened edges of its carvings. Together with the Pancha Rathas, it forms part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 1984.

Nearly three centuries later, the Chola dynasty, then the leading power in the south, pushed the block-built temple to a size the region had never seen. The Brihadisvara at Thanjavur, in the state of Tamil Nadu, was completed in 1010 under King Rajaraja I and is widely regarded as the high point of Dravidian architecture, the temple tradition of southern India. Its tower over the sanctum, known as a vimana, rises about 66 metres in granite and is crowned by a capstone estimated at around 80 tonnes.
Carved tower over the sanctum of the Airavatesvara Temple at Darasuram under a blue sky
A stone horse and carved wheel at the Airavatesvara Temple, Darasuram, where the front hall is built in the form of a temple chariot.

The logistics deserve as much credit as the design. Thanjavur lies in a fertile river delta with no granite quarries close by, so every block had to be brought in from elsewhere. The temple remains in daily worship, the visit on the Deccan Odyssey comes at dusk, when the low sun warms the colour of the stone.

About a century and a half later, a short drive away at Darasuram, one of his successors, Rajaraja II, built the Airavatesvara on a far smaller scale and spent the effort on detail. Its front hall is carved as a stone chariot, complete with wheels and horses, echoing the wooden chariots that carry temple deities through the streets at festival time. The Airavatesvara and the Brihadisvara both belong to the Great Living Chola Temples, a UNESCO listing named for the worship that continues at them today.

“Some of the carvings at Darasuram are barely an inch high. The Airavatesvara is best seen from a few inches away, which leaves the wide-angle lens with little to do.”

Carved tower over the sanctum of the Airavatesvara Temple at Darasuram under a blue sky
The tower over the sanctum of the Airavatesvara Temple at Darasuram, built under the Chola king Rajaraja II in the 12th century.

The Chariot at Hampi That Only Looks Like One Stone

Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire, which ruled much of southern India for more than two centuries, and its builders had granite on every side, piled in boulders the size of houses. The Vittala Temple, begun in the 15th century and expanded under King Krishnadevaraya in the early 16th century, is the most elaborate thing they made from it. For many travellers, it is the moment that defines the best train travel in India.

Its best-known feature, a shrine in the form of a temple chariot, appears on India’s 50 rupee note and is regularly described as a monolith. It is not. It was assembled from granite blocks, with the joints hidden so neatly in the carved detail that they are hard to spot.
Granite stone chariot at the Vittala Temple in Hampi, a stop on the best train travel in India
The stone chariot in the courtyard of the Vittala Temple at Hampi, assembled from granite blocks with the joints hidden in the carving.

The temple’s great hall adds a second surprise, granite pillars that produce musical tones when tapped, although visitors are no longer allowed to test them. The city was sacked in 1565, and its ruins have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986.

“The wheels of Hampi’s stone chariot were cut from separate blocks, and marks on the platform suggest they once turned. Vijayanagara’s builders asked a great deal of granite.”

Granite, Basalt and the Best Train Travel in India

Seen one at a time, these sites are scattered across three states, from Tamil Nadu through Karnataka to Maharashtra, and reaching them independently means a patchwork of domestic flights and long road transfers. This is where luxury train journeys earn their place, since the train covers the distances and the unpacking happens once.

The Great Southern Mail, a Marée & Meridian journey aboard the Deccan Odyssey, offers some of the best train travel in India. It departs Chennai on 22 January 2028 and arrives in Mumbai on 29 January. The Brihadisvara and the Airavatesvara fall on day three, the Shore Temple and the Pancha Rathas on day four, the Vittala Temple on day five and the Kailasa at Ellora on day seven, with every excursion guided and included.

Ceremonial welcome beside the Deccan Odyssey luxury train, offering the best train travel in India
A ceremonial welcome on the red-carpeted platform beside the Deccan Odyssey, the train that carries the Great Southern Mail from Chennai to Mumbai.

On board, the Deccan Odyssey provides a personal butler for each cabin, along with a lounge car, bar, spa and dining restaurants, so the hours between one temple and the next are well spent aboard one of India’s finest luxury train journeys. Few of India’s luxury train journeys take in this many of the country’s great stone temples on a single route, and for anyone curious about how medieval India built, this one has a strong claim to being the best train travel in India, and one of the finest journeys in the country by any measure.

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