Mahabalipuram, the Seven Pagodas of old sailors' charts, was a port city of the Pallava kings, who ruled this coast from their capital at Kanchipuram in the seventh and eighth centuries. Their sculptors worked in granite, carving temples out of the living rock and building others from cut stone, and the town is now full of the results. The Mukunda Nayanar Temple is one of the smaller and quieter of them, a modest stone shrine of the eighth century dedicated to Shiva, standing a little apart from the crowds in the north-west of the old town.
It is not a showpiece, and that is its charm. You can walk around it in a few minutes, look at the weathered stonework and the plain doorway, and have it almost to yourself on a weekday morning. The point of stopping is the context: here is the same hand that made the great monuments by the sea, working in a smaller, simpler key. Nearby lie fields, palms and small houses, and the sound of chisels tapping carries from the stone-carvers' workshops that line the streets, where sculptors still make gods and animals for temples around the world.
Mahabalipuram has about 12,000 people, and it is small enough that fuel and food are easy to find, with a few stations along the main road and many cafés near the shore temple. The East Coast Road gets you here from Chennai in a couple of hours. Be careful with speed bumps at villages, and with the traffic of buses and cars on weekends. Park near the main complex, where guards keep watch, and walk.
The sea is never far. In the evening a breeze comes off the Bay of Bengal, the heat softens, and the carved stone turns the colour of honey. It is the best time to wander, when the day trippers have gone, and to sit with a glass of lime soda and think about how long these granite shapes have been standing here in the salt wind.