Chennai can easily be one of those place you just glimpse between flights on your Indian holiday adventure. But you will be rewarded if you take it in and experience the modern metropolis that was the first British settlement in India in 1640.
Chennai, formerly known as Madras, is the capital of Tamil Nadu state. It has also become an Indian powerhouse city, with the third largest GDP per capita in the country in 2015. You see this the moment you approach the city outskirts. It’s a sprawling mass of skyscrapers glinting in the sunshine, new motorways and flyovers twisting like spaghetti and ranks of upwardly mobile workers moving the cogs of the Indian economy.