The Lonely Planet pooh-poohs Mahabalipuram’s tourist-oriented town center as ‘Backpackistan’: a place for tourists to get their banana pancakes and inauthentic trinkets from Nepal and Tibet. But when you think about it, what could be more in keeping for a former Pallava seaport, where ancient Chinese, Persian and Roman coins attest to centuries of outsiders coming and going, slinging their cash?

Whether you enjoy the laid-back, backpackery atmosphere or not (and we do), there’s no denying that Mahabalipuram has got the goods. Known since Marco Polo’s time as ‘Seven Pagodas’, five of them remain: the Shore Temple, which stands at one end of the beach, and four so-called monolithic temples, cut directly from the living rock. As a collection, they represent some of the finest examples of sculptured rock carvings in India.

Puttering around these temples in a tuk-tuk is the way we like to do it, breaking up sightseeing with a stroll on the beach or lunch in a fishing village, where you can also do a bit of surfing or scuba. Krishna’s Butterball is another novel sight: a giant boulder that appears to have stopped rolling halfway down a hill, resisting attempts to move it since the 7th century. Even knowing this, it can give you anxiety to see swarms of schoolchildren sitting in the shade beneath it.

The beaches here don’t quite match those in northern Kerala or Goa, and sure – you might be more impressed by the temples of Trichy, Thanjavur or Madurai. But it’s not a competition. Mahabalipuram has its own unique charms, and it’s more about the atmosphere than any one superlative sight. It’s a wonderful place for a couple of days of relaxation at the end of a Tamil Nadu tour, or a briefer stop on the way from Chennai to Pondicherry.