Tranquil in Tranquebar
India: rich in culture, odour, history, noise, extraordinary people, vehicular mayhem, magnificent sights, pitiable poverty. Especially in the deep south state of Tamil Nadu, which is steamy, vividly colourful, exuberant, spectacularly templed, teeming with pilgrims, over-the-top in every way.
The sensory input can reach overload; there can come a point where all you want to do is sink into a seaside deckchair, but where? The Coromandel Coast presents hundreds of kilometres of sandy beaches but is almost devoid of resorts, a situation not helped by the 2004 tsunami. But here there is an easygoing place, ignored by guide books, that miraculously possesses a decent hotel, with a fascinating history to boot and many well-kept relics to support it.
Trundling by Ambassador taxi towards the old French enclave of Karaikal, skirting the village of Tarangampadi, I glimpse a sign touting a guest house. We follow its directions and a baroque white stucco gateway appears. The portly car eases through it and we proceed along a main street lined with old schools, convents, churches and a golden statue of Bach, Handel or some such bewigged apparition from 18th-century Europe.
Suddenly, as the sea comes into view, a vast earthen square spreads before us. Lording over it is a huge colonial fort. Facing it across the square is an elegant, two-storey mansion - a heritage hotel. Beyond, the ocean waves lap the shore. Settling into the magic of breezy verandahs, white cane chairs and a four-course French meal, I begin to learn about where I am.
The Danes called it Trankebar, which the French and English made Tranquebar. It's a wonderful example of the magnetic pull India had on the European powers. After the Portuguese and the Dutch, but before the British and the French, the Danes came seeking a toehold in which to trade for the riches of India. In 1620, Admiral Ove Gedde signed an agreement with the king of Thanjavur, who ruled the highly fertile Cauvery River basin and its coast. This assigned the coastal village of Tarangampadi and its immediate surroundings to the Danish East India Company.
The Danes built a moated fort on the seafront, a sea wall and ramparts enclosing an area of about 500 square metres. The colony reached its apogee of prosperity in the 18th century; even so, it never fulfilled Copenhagen's hopes. A maximum of two Danish ships a year left the Baltic Sea for the Bay of Bengal. There wasn't even a port: ships had to anchor offshore and goods were ferried in rowing boats that battled the surging breakers.