After Tranquebar, the next seashore town I want to visit on Tamil Nadu’s picturesque southeast Coromandel Coast is Pulicat. This is a quaint 17th-century Dutch fishing village 60 km from Chennai. I like the name. It sounds Walt Disneyish. Making me imagine a wicked and witty cartoon cat character from Marvel comic books as the coastal town’s mascot. What attracted me to Pulicat is its lighthouse. I am fascinated by lighthouses. If I get the opportunity to climb one, I grab it. This lighthouse, oh joy, is open to the public. It stands on an island. The town is another island. A seawater channel separates the two. You crossover by a bridge. Or take a boat.


Pulicat’s other attraction is its lake and bird sanctuary. The lake is the country’s second biggest brackish water body. A migratory home for birds of rare species. Like the Kingfisher, Spoonbills, Waterfowl, Egrets, Pelicans, Herons, Storks, Ducks, Flamingos, Gulls, and Terns. Bird watchers go crazy here. Just as history lovers explore Pulicat and discover it was not limited to Dutch colonialism alone. The Portuguese and British were also here at different times. Their culture and heritage remain. But the influence of the Dutch is strongest. It can be seen in the architectural styles of Pulicat’s ancient fort now lying in ruins, its churches, buildings, and cemetery.

Pulicat needs a weekend. I will visit the old fishing village, hire a boat and say hello to the migratory birds, decode its history dating back to the Chola, Pandyan, and Pallava kings, pay obeisance at their temples and a 17th-century mosque of the Lebbay Arab boat builders, the historic Dutch and Portuguese churches, search for remains of a gun powder factory and slave market, visit the ghostly Dutch cemetery guarded by skeletons, buy myself a Palayakat lungi that started out in Pulicat and went on to become a sarong across South East Asia, go up the ancient lighthouse, sit on the white sands of Pulicat beach eating Tiger Prawns caught in its shallow waters while watching the sunset.

Read More:- Next trip, the old Lighthouse of Pulicat- story of souls